JustASC

Joe Biden tells  reporters this:

“AIPAC does not speak for the entire American Jewish community,” Biden said. “There’s other organizations as strong and as consequential.”

That will ruffle some feathers. The first sentence is undeniable. Sometimes AIPAC doesn’t even speak for AIPAC — for example, during the 1990s, when many of its leaders (not all, not all) swallowed hard when promoting an Oslo process they disdained.

As for the second sentence? The word “organizations” is regrettable, since one would be hard-pressed to pinpoint another pro-Israel organization as “strong and as consequential.” Israel Policy Forum? Not quite. J Street? Not yet. And the other bigs — ADL, AJC, et al – tend to defer to AIPAC on the lobbying front. Biden would have been on more solid ground had he said instead, “There are other pro-Israel voices and expertise that need to be heard and weighed. A senator would be a mere puppet if he unquestionably followed the counsel of a single lobbying group.”

Unless, of course, doing just that has become the working definition of pro-Israel — which would be bad for Israel, and bad for the Jews. If differing with AIPAC is considered apostasy, wouldn’t that confirm the kinds of nasty things the Carters, Walts and Mearsheimers have been saying about us?

(Looks like the Obama-Biden folks felt a need to clarify, later issuing this:

“Barack Obama and Joe Biden have both enjoyed close and effective cooperation with AIPAC over many years, grounded in their respect for its important mission to support Israel’s security and a strong U.S.-Israel relationship,” said spokeswoman Wendy Morigi. “That is a mission they share, and they look forward to continuing to work closely with AIPAC on their common goals.”)

This entry was posted on Friday, September 5th, 2008 at 10:10 am and is filed under JustASC. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.