Aaron L Bennett

In 2018, The Washington Post ran a piece on where AIPAC came from. It's worth reading slowly. Oct. 1953: Israeli forces killed more than 60 civilians in the village of Qibya. Time reported it. The New York Times published U.N. findings refuting Israel's lies about it. Eisenhower froze U.S. aid. Dulles said so openly. An ordinary country faces consequences. This one (Israel) built a machine. 5 months later, the American Zionist Committee for Public Affairs (AZCPA 0was launched. It was later renamed AIPAC. The Post's own subhead says it "was formed to spin positive PR after Israeli atrocities." Not to question the atrocity. To manage the fallout. Then came the model: ... Build a "united front" and treat any dissent as betrayal. ... Operate on the premise that "there was nothing Israel might do that would jeopardize American Jewish support." ... Worse, the article says the more disturbing Israeli behavior got, "the more Israel needed their ardent advocacy." ... Since the late 1970s, steer campaign money toward chosen candidates, creating "a unity that politicians have had to respect." That last line is the whole story. Politicians learned that crossing this lobby has a price. So they stopped asking hard questions about where American tax dollars and American diplomatic cover go. That is leverage over American policy, built after a massacre, and sustained for 70 years. Notice the Post didn't say American Jews are a monolith. It said AIPAC works hard to create the perception of one, and punishes Jews who break from it. An American public that funds this deserves to know the origin story. The question isn't "why is this being said now?" It's "why did we stop saying it?"