IT IS TIME FOR AIPAC TO REGISTER AS A FOREIGN AGENT OF ISRAEL
BY
ALLAN C. BROWNFELD
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The
American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is one of our most
powerful lobbying groups and contributes tens of millions of dollars to
candidates who support Israel’s far-right government——and millions to
those who challenge members of Congress who defend Palestinian rights or
are critical of Israel’s continuing assault on civilian targets in
Gaza.
In 2024, AIPAC is
expected to spend more than $100 million to defeat congressional
candidates who have decried the suffering of civilians in Gaza, where
more than 30,000 have been killed, including thousands of women and
children. Beyond this, AIPAC is less than truthful about what is taking
place in Gaza. The Jewish organization IfNotNow declares that, “AIPAC
is lying to members of Congress. They’re denying that Israel is
blocking aid to starving Palestinians in Gaza. In the same breath
they’re lobbying. For $14 billion in weapons funding to Israel.”
AIPAC
has instructed its supporters to tell lawmakers that reports that
people are starving in Gaza are false. In their book “The Israel Lobby
and U.S. Foreign Policy,” professors John Mearsheimer of the University
of Chicago and Stephen Walt of Harvard’s Kennedy School note that,
“AIPAC’s success is due to its ability to reward legislators and
congressional candidates who support its agenda and punish those who
challenge it. AIPAC makes sure that its friends get strong financial
support. Anyone who is seen as hostile to Israel can be sure that AIPAC
will divert campaign contributions to his or her opponents. The
bottom line is that AIPAC, a de facto agent for a foreign government,
has a stranglehold on Congress with the result that U.S. policy towards
Israel is not debated there, even though that policy has important
consequences for the entire world.”
AIPAC
is particularly eager to silence Jewish critics of Israeli policy. In
the August 2022 primary of Rep. Andy Levin (D-MI) against Rep. Haley
Stevens (D-MI), two incumbents placed in the same district by
redistricting, AIPAC played a major role in defeating Levin. According
to Jewish Insider, “Stevens has been endorsed and taken more than
$3,000,000 in donations bundled by AIPAC, which is supporting more than
100 representatives who voted against certifying the 2020 election
results.” On the other hand, Rep. Levin was clear that he would not
accept funding from “special interest groups that are supporting
insurrectionist representatives.”
AIPAC
attacked Levin for sponsoring legislation that would require the U.S.
to refer to East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip as
“Occupied Palestinian Territory” in official documents. Levin is also
the author of legislation to make the two-state solution official U.S.
Middle East policy and is a critic of what he calls the “creeping
annexation” of Israel’s far-right governments. As the son of Rep.
Sander Levin and the nephew of the late Sen. Carl Levin, he is from one
of the most prominent Jewish families in American politics. “It’s a
lineage,” Levin said, “that definitely is extra threatening to AIPAC…”.
During the campaign, he declared that, “AIPAC can’t stand the idea that I
am the clearest, strongest Jewish voice in Congress standing for a
simple proposition: that there’s no way to have a secure home for the
Jewish people unless we achieve the political and human rights for the
Palestinian people.”
Ever
since AIPAC emerged as a separate entity from the American Zionist
Council (AZC) in the 1960s, there have been efforts to have it register
under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) as an agent of the
state of Israel. As its political role has increased with its creation
of PACs and its contributions of millions of dollars to political
candidates, such calls are on the rise.
One
strong advocate for this designation is M.J. Rosenberg , who worked at
AIPAC from 1974 to 1976 and from 1982 to 1986 and worked on Capitol Hill
for 15 years. He was also a Clinton Administration appointee to USAID.
In a 2008 article in The Forward, he wrote: “It’s time for AIPAC to
register as a foreign agent,” noting that, “It’s AIPAC whose clout on
matters relating to Israel exceeds the clout of the NRA on matters
related to guns.” He cited George Washington’s 1796 farewell address in
which he stated that ‘a passionate attachment of one nation for another
produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation,
facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where
no real common interest exists…betrays the former into a participation
in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or
identification.”
To
protect against what Washington called a “passionate attachment” to a
foreign country, the U.S. has laws in place that forbid foreign
governments from wielding certain kinds of influence or lobbying. Every
foreign country represented in Washington by foreign agents must
register under FARA. Under its terms, the country in question is banned
from participating in or influencing American elections. Every contact
that agents have with Congress must be reported to the
Department of Justice, along with how and where they spend their resources.
AIPAC
gets away with its political involvement in behalf of Israel, Rosenberg
points out, because it’s founder,I.L. Kenen, developed a legal loophole
through which AIPAC is defined not as a lobby for a foreign state but
as Americans who support that state. In Rosenberg’s view, it’s time to
undo Kenen’s work by requiring AIPAC to register as a foreign agent.
“It will still be able to advocate for Israel,” he wrote, “but as an
Israel lobby which admits to getting its marching orders from the
Israeli government. What it would not be able to do is direct campaign
money to politicians.”
Going
back to the 1950s, the Eisenhower administration repeatedly insisted
that the American Zionist Council (AZC) register as “agents of a foreign
government.” In November 1962, Attorney General Robert Kennedy’s
Department of Justice ordered AZC to do just that because of FARA
violations, alleging that it was being funded by the Jewish Agency for
Israel, headquartered in Jerusalem. The department of Justice later
withdrew its demand after the AZC disbanded. Then, the AZC transformed
itself into AIPAC.
In the
1960s, Rabbi Elmer Berger of the American Council for Judaism, a
prominent Jewish opponent of Zionism, worked with Sen. J. William
Fulbright (D-AR), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, to
determine whether AIPAC should be required to register as a foreign
agent. By the end of 1962, the Justice Department formally opened an
investigation and announced that it would require the AZC to register as
a foreign agent.
The
hearings conducted by Sen.Fulbright revealed the AZC’s complete reliance
on funds from the Jewish Agency in Jerusalem to survive. The AZC was
forced to admit this in a deposition to Fulbright: “The AZC has
received virtually all of its operating funds from the Jewish Agency for
Israel.” On Nov. 21, 1962, the AZC received a certified letter from
the Department of Justice stating that it had to register as a foreign
agent. The AZC disbanded—-and morphed into AIPAC.
The
Senate hearings documented the fact that in the early 1960s, Israel
funneled $5 million (more than $35 million in today’s dollars) into
U.S.propaganda and lobbying activities. AIPAC, the successor to the
AZC, was incorporated in 1963. Its leader, I.L. Kenen, had been a
registered lobbyist under FARA and had been an employee of Israel’s
Office of Information at the United Nations. AIPAC was created to
remove Kenen and his work in behalf of Israel from the FARA register.
In Sen.Fulbright’s view, Israel’s organized supporters were “the most
powerful foreign policy lobby in American politics” and capable of
“duping Americans into a policy.”
AIPAC
has helped make Israel the largest cumulative recipient of U.S. foreign
assistance since the end of World War 11. It has received more than
$300 billion in U.S. aid (adjusted for inflation). It now receives more
than $3.8 billion annually. As a result of AIPAC’s efforts, this aid
includes numerous provisions that are not available to other
recipients. According to the Congressional Research Service, these
include providing aid “as all cash grant transfers, not designated for
particular projects , and transferred as a lump sum in the first month
of the fiscal year, instead of in installments. Israel is allowed to
spend about a quarter of the military aid for the procurement in Israel
of defense articles and services…rather than in the U.S.”
AIPAC
claims not to be a foreign agent of Israel, but all available evidence
indicates that it is. Peter Beinart, an editor of Jewish Currents, has
said, “In reality, AIPAC is not independent of the Israeli government.”
He notes that when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu came about
against the U.S. agreement with Iran regarding nuclear weapons, AIPAC
did not have a choice with regard to its own position. “it pretty much
had to kowtow to the Israeli government,’ he wrote. Further, according
to journalist Connie Bruck, AIPAC has been able to use Congressional
support to prevent any president wanting to negotiate with Israel from
using the multi-billion dollar packages of military aid that go to
Israel each year as leverage, thus taking away the U.S.’s strongest tool
of negotiation.
As
Israel’s far-right government rejects the creation of a Palestinian
state and continues its assault upon Gaza, in which more than 30,000
Palestinians, including thousands of women and children, have been
killed,—-using U.S.aid to do it, a reconsideration of registering AIPAC
as a foreign agent is certainly in order.
M.J.Rosenberg,
the former AIPAC staff member who now calls for it to register as a
foreign agent, makes the case that, “AIPAC is bad for America, but could
well be catastrophic for Israel, if it hasn’t been already. This is
something more and more Jews, particularly the young, now understand,
which is why groups like J Street, IfNotNow and Jewish Voice for Peace
have come to the fore in recent years, and have grabbed their share of
congressional turf, which was once exclusively owned by AIPAC.”
As
Israel has elected a regime that embraces an openly racist mindset,
AIPAC’s new political role and its spending of millions of dollars in
U.S. political campaigns in behalf of the policies and interests of an
extremist foreign government, should be of concern to all Americans,
regardless of what their views may be about the Middle East. The time
is ripe to revisit the case for registering AIPAC as a foreign agent.
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Allan
C.Brownfeld is a nationally syndicated columnist and is editor of
ISSUES, the quarterly journal of the American Council for Judaism. (
www.acjna.org)