AIPAC Worked Against Rabin & Oslo
Kidnapped brother of ex- Attorney General claims sister worked with the Juarez Cartel
Censorship: Aggression against Civilization
One frequent charge lobbied against the American Israel Public Affairs Committee [AIPAC] is that it is too closely aligned to the Likud faction in Israel. Meaning that contrary to its stated goal of supporting whatever is the policy of the current Israeli government, AIPAC is in league with the right-wing Likud party and has in the past actually worked against Labor-led Israeli governments.
Those who make that claim have more information to now buttress their case.
Douglas Bloomfield, a former AIPAC staffer, wrote an op-ed in the New Jersey Jewish News arguing just that. Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman are two former AIPAC officials who are currently awaiting trial under the charge that they passed secret information onto Israel. In the FBI's espionage case, Ms. Bloomfield writes that it isn't only Messers Rosen and Weissman whom are under trial but AIPAC itself. That is because the FBI seized untold files in its raid of AIPAC Washington D.C. office that reveal that the institution sought to undermine the Oslo peace process that the United States and Israeli Prime Minister Yatzhik Rabin were committed to.
If Rabin was for the Oslo peace process, then AIPAC should support the Israeli government. But, instead, the organization sought to undermine Rabin at every turn.
“After Rabin came in in 1992 and said he wanted to make peace and signed the Oslo accords, and the U.S. was supposed to pay the tab, every restriction on all political and financial dealings [by the Palestinians] came out of our office. We took full advantage of every lapse by [Yasser] Arafat and the Palestinians to put on more restrictions and limit relations,” said one unanimous source from AIPAC.
Putting aside the debate - both pro and con - on the Oslo peace process. Rabin was trying to push this through, and the ostensible pro-Israel lobby should have helped. Instead, they worked tireless to undermine the Palestinians and thus undermine the peace process. The Palestinians need some assistance in building civil and security institutions, but AIPAC sought to prevent any funding from going to the Palestinians so it can latter claim that Palestinian society is too weak for a state.
AIPAC was so anti-peace that it got the United States Congress to actually pass a resolution detailing how a two-state solution should look like that was less generous than what even Israel offered the Palestinians.
Many left-wing Jews have long complained that AIPAC does not represent them [this is not to say it doesn't represent most left-wing Jews], so they started a new organization J-Street. Maybe J-Street will be able to take the reins from AIPAC as the voice of the pro-Israel lobby and one that is also pro-peace. Or maybe not.
