AIPAC

AIPAC and the Secret Worlds of Peoplehood

No cause, force or organization, brings Americans, primarily Jews but also Christians, together like the cause of Israel as managed by AIPAC.

AIPAC and the Politics of Reaffirmation

Politics is a matter of emotions as much as intellect, and rituals and ceremonies are central. The annual AIPAC policy conference in Washington, D.C. is, perhaps above all, a ceremony of reaffirmation of the relationships among American Jews, non-Jewish Americans, the American state, and Israel.

A Tale of Two Lobbies

The problem of the Arab-Israel conflict begins with the term itself, which misrepresents the unilateral Arab war against Israel as a bilateral dispute. Unilateral aggression is not unheard of—when did Poland ever aggress against Germany or Russia?—but nothing in United Nations history compares in intensity or fixity with Arab belligerence toward Israel, a UN member state. 

The Organized Community

There are hundreds of Jewish organizations in the United States. Fifty-two national groups have qualified for membership in the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. But only a handful, whether secular, religious, or "fraternal," can be said to wield extensive influence either inside the Jewish community or beyond it. One of these is the American Jewish Committee (AJC), a quintessential establishment agency whose annual meeting, held last week in Washington, drew notables from U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to Israel's Defense Minister Ehud Barak. Founded in New York by affluent, acculturated "uptown" German Jews in 1906, the AJC sought initially to...

AIPAC

Against a background of sharp disagreement between Washington and Jerusalem, the annual policy conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee winds down today. On Monday, the 7,500 delegates—Jews, Christians, African Americans, as well as European and Canadian activists—heard Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declare that the United States would tell Israel the "truth" when "difficult but necessary choices" had to be made. Today, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is scheduled to meet President Barack Obama. Delegates from all 50 states planned to spend Tuesday on Capitol Hill speaking with their respective Senators and Members of Congress. But what is AIPAC, and what...