TRT World: “Pro-Israel AIPAC slammed for being ‘complicit in Gaza genocide’

 While the NYT article accurately highlights AIPAC’s involvement in financing electoral campaigns against left-leaning Democrats perceived as not adequately supportive of Israel, it overlooks AIPAC’s broader antidemocratic effects. For example, AIPAC raises funds for many right-wing politicians, including individuals commonly described as insurrectionists. In the 2022 midterm elections, AIPAC endorsed 109 Republican candidates who voted in favor of overturning the results of the 2020 presidential election.
 
3. Typically, around 75 percent of American Jews vote for liberal or progressive candidates. This trend is exemplified by instances such as Barack Obama winning 78 percent of the Jewish vote in 2008 and Joe Biden receiving 77 percent in 2020.
 
   Given the substantial achievements and freedoms that American Jews have enjoyed under the principles and opportunities afforded by liberalism, it’s unsurprising that the majority of them align with liberal values and consistently vote for Democratic candidates. Moreover, a consistent majority of American Jews express support for US pressure on both Israel and the Palestinians if it would help secure a peace deal.


   Accordingly, the right-wing policies championed by Likud embody what American liberals reject: occupation, apartheid, and ethnic tribalism. However, while AIPAC’s alignment with these policies places it well outside the mainstream of American Jewish opinion, its electoral practices make it very challenging for politicians to support reasonable pressure on Israel to conform to international law.


   In a 2022 Democratic primary, AIPAC allocated significant financial resources towards opposing (and ultimately defeating) the candidacy of progressive Jewish Congressman Andy Levin. Despite Levin’s robust advocacy for Israel, he aligned himself with the liberal lobby organization J Street, which espouses a pro-Israel, pro-peace stance. (Additionally, Levin supported progressive domestic policies such as the expansion of Medicare coverage.)
 
4. While Jewish donors as a whole tend to favor liberal Democratic candidates and causes, a significant portion of extremely affluent Jewish donors, such as billionaires Robert Kraft, Paul Singer and Bernie Marcus, typically endorse the AIPAC/Likud agenda. These megadonors wield considerable influence due to their substantial contributions, enabling them to lobby for specific foreign and domestic policies.


   Consequently, AIPAC not only promotes Likud-aligned foreign policies but also generally supports Republican domestic policies. The latter tendency is to be expected, as the individuals who oversee and finance AIPAC tend to be affluent, and therefore favor policies that benefit their personal and business affairs.


5. A reflection of AIPAC’s priorities is evident in its failure to initially endorse one steadfast supporter of Israel in 2022: former Republican Representative Liz Cheney. As former President Trump vehemently criticized Cheney for her condemnation of his disgraceful words and actions concerning the 2020 election, AIPAC, consistent with other Republican entities, opted to align with Trump rather than stand alongside Cheney, a vocal proponent of democratic principles. However, after public criticism from Cheney and others, AIPAC reversed its embarrassing position.
 
In conclusion, AIPAC has played an important part in shifting Israel to the far right. By consistently promoting Likud’s policies, it has undermined moderate Israeli politicians. Imagine how different Israel might look if AIPAC — easily the biggest, wealthiest and most influential player in the Israel lobby — had advocated for limitations on illegal settlement expansion, thereby fostering a climate more conducive to peace and stability. Instead, Likudniks could rightly tell Israeli voters: We can maintain a harsh occupation, expand Jewish-only settlements, all while continuing to benefit from substantial American military, economic and diplomatic support.

Via Detailed Political Quizzes

Comments can be sent to Israel-Palestine-Quiz@live.com

Detailed Political Quizzes

Detailed Political Quizzes

Remarkably, nowhere in Mr. Sadjadpour’s piece does he mention any of the following examples of Iranian goodwill toward the US.

1. At the heart of the Iran-Contra project during President Ronald Reagan’s second term (1985-1989) “was a complex scheme to supply Iran with weapons in exchange for its help in securing the release of American hostages held by Lebanese militias. On the American side, it was also intended to open channels to important figures in the Islamic Republic…The scheme collapsed in 1986 because US officials tried to skirt American law by diverting proceeds from these arms sales to anticommunist rebels in Nicaragua, not because of Iranian duplicity or recalcitrance. Even after Washington became embroiled in the ensuing scandal, Tehran was ready to continue dialogue and cooperation; it was the United States that withdrew.”

2. While George H. W. Bush was president (1989-1993), Iran helped secure the release of American hostages in Lebanon. “Tehran spent several million dollars and exerted considerable pressure on Shia militias in Lebanon for this purpose….None of these actions would have happened without [Supreme Leader] Khamenei’s assent. But Iranian cooperation did not elicit the response [Iran’s President] Rafsanjani had expected. The Bush administration excluded the Islamic Republic from the October 1991 Madrid conference intended to ratify what Bush called the ‘new world order’ in the Middle East…In April 1992, Bush’s national security adviser, Brent Scowcroft, informed Rafsanjani through [UN envoy Giandomenico] Picco that there would be no reciprocal steps by the United States — even though Iran had succeeded in freeing the last American hostages…”

3. By early 1994, President Rafsanjani saw another opening to improve relations with the US: the Clinton administration needed Iran to supply arms to Muslims in Bosnia, as UN Security Council resolutions and US law prohibited such provision. “Legal considerations aside, Clinton worried that any direct American arming of Muslims and Croats would be detected, potentially prompting Serbian reprisals against US forces, severely negative Russian reaction, and European withdrawals from the internationally mandated peacekeeping force. What Washington needed was a third party that could get arms into Bosnia with relatively low risk of detection…So, as the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence later documented, the Clinton administration decided ‘the Iranians could be the suppliers.’”

“[T]he arms flowed in and [the result was] the creation of a more level battlefield [that] helped bring the parties together for the negotiations that culminated in the Dayton Peace Agreement of December 1995.”

In 1996, after the Los Angeles Times reported on Clinton secretly permitting covert Iranian arms shipments into Bosnia, the “administration publicly condemned Iran for trying to establish an Islamist beachhead in Europe’s backyard…”

4. In another effort to improve relations with the US, President Rafsanjani offered a lucrative deal to Conoco, a US oil company. However, in 1995, President “Clinton, who had adopted a policy of ‘dual containment’ of Iran and Iraq, responded with a ban on almost all US trade with and investment in Iran.”

5. “In 1998, the US Defense Department vetoed a delegation of prominent US nuclear specialists to go to Iran to investigate its nuclear program at the invitation of the government of newly-elected Iranian President Mohammad Khatami…The Pentagon objected to the delegation’s mission even though it was offered the option of including one or more scientists of its own choosing on the delegation…The Pentagon veto of the nuclear scientists’ delegation eliminated the Khatami government’s most promising initiative to promote a thaw in US-Iran relations by weakening a key US argument for viewing Iran as a threat.”

6. After the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks on September 11, 2001, the US “requested help and Iran’s diplomats and Revolutionary Guard quietly provided extensive intelligence and political assistance to the US military and CIA, to improve targeting the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. [And once] the Taliban was ousted in late 2001, Iran again proved crucial to getting the victorious Northern Alliance to accept a limited number of cabinet posts and Hamid Karzai as the new president — a critical step toward immediately stabilizing post-Taliban Afghanistan. Iranian diplomats made clear their interest in expanding contacts with the United States….[However,] any remaining chance of reconciliation evaporated in [January] 2002, when [President] George W. Bush declared Iran part of his Axis of Evil.”

7. “In March 2002, just weeks before he left the State Department, James Dobbins met in Geneva with an Iranian delegation…The conference was focused on developing Afghanistan’s security forces. [Iran] offered to build barracks for and train twenty thousand Afghan troops, as part of a larger US-led program to help stabilize Afghanistan…” Against Dobbins’s wishes, the US failed to respond to Iran’s offer.

8. “Just after the lightning takeover of Baghdad by US forces [in April 2003] an unusual two-page document spewed out of a fax machine at the Near East bureau of the State Department. It was a proposal from Iran for a broad dialogue with the United States, and the fax suggested everything was on the table — including full cooperation on nuclear programs, acceptance of Israel and the termination of Iranian support for Palestinian militant groups. But top Bush administration officials, convinced the Iranian government was on the verge of collapse, belittled the initiative. Instead, they formally complained to the Swiss ambassador who had sent the fax with a cover letter certifying it as a genuine proposal supported by key power centers in Iran…”

9. On July 17, 2017, the Trump administration (once again) confirmed that Iran was in compliance with the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear deal. Despite experts’ consensus that such compliance continued, on May 8, 2018, President Donald Trump announced his plans to withdraw the United States from the agreement and restore punishing sanctions aimed at severing Iran from the global financial system.

Given the above examples of Iranian goodwill which Karim Sadjadpour somehow ignores, one must conclude that his opinion piece is grossly misleading.

Via Detailed Political Quizzes

( Detailed Political Quizzes) – Ami Ayalon, a former director of Israel’s Shin Bet security agency, explains why Oslo failed in his 2020 memoir (co-authored with the academic Anthony David), Friendly Fire: How Israel Became Its Own Worst Enemy and the Hope for Its Future. Essentially, Ayalon argues that while Palestinian security forces worked effectively with Israel to decrease terrorism, Israel increased illegal settlements and failed to deliver promised occupied territory. The predictable result was violent resistance from the Palestinian street and greater popular support for Hamas.

Consider three examples from the book.

1. Prime Minister Peres Fails To Deliver In January 1996, Prime Minister Shimon Peres promised the Shin Bet substantial funds to fight terrorism. Ayalon responded “that money wouldn’t be enough. ‘Ultimately, ending terrorism depends on politics.’…[Security services can only] fight back the flames to create breathing room for the politicians to launch a political process. [And, he added,] ‘To hunt down the terrorists, we are also going to need Arafat’…This, of course, was the logic of Oslo…” (p. 126) According to Ayalon, “only Arafat could defeat Hamas, because almost all Palestinians still lined up behind his vision of national independence. So if the Palestinian Authority worked with us to fight Hamas,…[w]e’d have to follow through on the terms of Oslo and withdraw from over 90 percent of the Occupied Territories.” (p. 127) “[Ayalon] establish[ed] effective cooperation with the Palestinian security forces, led by [Mohammad] Dahlan in Gaza and Colonel Jibril Rajoub in the West Bank… [Jibril told Ayalon that] ‘I didn’t sit in jail for seventeen years for Hamas to build a fundamentalist state.’” In fact, Jibril even continued to cooperate with the Shin Bet after his brother, Sheikh Naif, a member of Hamas, was imprisoned. (pp. 128-9, 131) “Dahlan, Jibril, and their forces, acting on Arafat’s orders, packed Palestinian prisons with militant Islamists.” Their “efforts were paying off: [They] had considerably reduced the frequency of suicide bombings.” “Peres, though, found one reason after another not to withdraw from Abu Sneina”, the Hebron neighborhood he had promised Arafat. (pp. 129, 142, 145) “Jibril’s heavy hand in preventing Hamas from murdering Israeli civilians had yielded nothing. In the years that followed, as the Palestinians received only scraps of the 90 percent of the territories Arafat thought he would get from us, Jibril went from being a hero on the streets, a tough ex-prisoner who did what it took to liberate his country, to someone perceived as tainted. In the eyes of many, [his brother] Sheikh Naif, the fundamentalist preacher and anti-Semite, had inherited his brother’s role as intrepid fighter for Palestinian freedom.” (p. 135) For more information on the Israel-Palestine conflict and other topics, go to: https://detailedpoliticalquizzes.wordpress.com/

2. Prime Minister Netanyahu Fails To Deliver “By October [1998], Arafat had received only a fraction of what he felt had been promised, and he was running out of patience because he couldn’t show his people that negotiating with the Israelis had brought them any closer to ending the occupation. The Americans shared his frustration; [President Bill] Clinton began pressuring [Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu] to complete the transfer of territory….Netanyahu finally agreed to take part in [the Wye River] summit…” (p. 165) “On the eve of the…summit, Bibi’s government announced plans to build twelve hundred homes near the Alei Zahav settlement, three miles inside the West Bank. Amazingly, Jibril and his forces continued working with us [Shin Bet]. In one case we got information about an attack in the center of Israel being planned in the Nablus area by a Hamas operative…[W]e captured him at [a] checkpoint.” (p. 165)

3. Prime Minister Barak Fails To Deliver In May 1999, “though Netanyahu had only implemented a fraction of what he promised at the Wye River summit, Arafat…was confident that [the newly elected Ehud] Barak would hand him the rest and move the political process toward a solution.” (p. 167) Ayalon explained to Barak that “‘if Arafat and the PA can’t deliver on their promises, people on the Palestinian street will reject diplomacy and turn to violence. They’ll come to see PA security apparatus as collaborators with the occupation.’ Security depended on a political horizon of hope…which Bibi never provided. Most Palestinians thought we used Oslo as a pretext to expand settlements.” (p. 169) Barak’s preferred approach was “to leapfrog over the withdrawal Bibi promised Arafat and head directly to final status negotiations.” While Arafat insisted that Wye be implemented, “Barak headed to Washington to win Clinton over to his plan….[Dahlan and Jibril and their men] were risking a civil war with Hamas to hold up their end of the bargain, and Barak wouldn’t even give them the pittance Bibi had promised.” (pp. 170, 171-2) With settlements expanding, “Hamas’s refrain — that Oslo was a trick and that Zionists only respond to power and force — was getting through….[Knowledgeable people told Ayalon] that if a second Intifada broke out, it would be a spontaneous eruption from the street fueled by bitter disappointment at the corruption average people saw in their leaders…[But] [t]he main reason would be loss of hope in a process that had only produced more settlements, roadblocks, and humiliation.” (p. 172) “The peace talks in July [2000] played out just as [Ayalon] had feared. Sure enough, Barak got Clinton to strong-arm Arafat into discussing the core issues at Camp David…, and when Barak presented Arafat with a deal, Arafat walked away.” (p. 181) (It’s important to note that Israel’s lead negotiator at Camp David later publicly stated that, “Camp David was not the missed opportunity for the Palestinians, and if I were a Palestinian I would have rejected Camp David, as well.” (Question 25: https://detailedpoliticalquizzes.wordpress.com/israel-palestine-quiz/ )) According to Ayalon, Israelis needed to understand that the Palestinians “behind the Second Intifada were disillusioned supporters of the peace process. [They included men] who worked with Jibril, guys who risked their necks pursuing Hamas terrorists. If some of these men were…dancing in [Jewish] blood, it wasn’t because they were beasts, it was because they’d lost hope.” (pp. 185-6)

Jeffrey Rudoph has prepared widely distributed quizzes on Israel-Palestine, Iran, Hamas, Terrorism, Saudi Arabia, US Inequality, the US Christian Right, Hezbollah, the Israeli Ultra-Orthodox, Qatar, China, and Egypt. These quizzes are available here.

Reprinted with the author’s permission from Detailed Political Quizzes