Much ink and angst has been expended on debating the extent of the influence American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a lobby group with the mission of strengthening the US-Israeli relationship. For years they have been the "most important organization affecting America's relationship with Israel WWW.AIPAC.ORG">AIPAC About a year ago we heard about an alternative to AIPAC, that would still promote Israel's interests, but would be more reflective of the movement within Israel and the United States to resolve peacefully the Arab-Israeli conflict.
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Back in October we heard this:
WASHINGTON – A top staffer for billionaire philanthropist George Soros met recently with senior representatives of the dovish pro-Israel community to discuss setting up an alternative to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, JTA has learned.
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The meeting focused on how best to press Congress and the Bush administration to back greater U.S. engagement toward resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and how to better represent American Jews who don’t buy into AIPAC’s often hawkish policies
AIPAC Alternative?
In December 2006, after the PATA debacle, we saw this in Salon:
AIPAC suffered a relatively small but symbolic defeat this past year -- one that may prove to have been a turning point. Earlier in the year, AIPAC put all its muscle behind a congressional bill called the Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act, which even some pro-Israel observers called "draconian." Going beyond even the Bush administration's own hard-line stance on the Hamas-led Palestinian government, it would have essentially cut off all American contact with any element of the Palestinian leadership, and hampered the U.S. government's ability to strengthen Palestinian moderates.
A group of small, left-leaning Jewish lobby groups, including the Israel Policy Forum, the Jewish Alliance for Justice and Peace and the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, banded together to battle AIPAC on the issue, and in the end were successful. A watered-down version of the bill was passed, with what they saw as the problematic language stripped away. An AIPAC official recently told me that AIPAC was satisfied with the softer bill's passage -- but it is quite clear that the incident represented a defeat for the organization.
It was, in fact, an impressive demonstration of what political cooperation and grass-roots advocacy can do. However, for these groups to replicate that success on a larger scale and with more of a substantive effect on U.S. foreign policy, there is a key missing element: real money.
That is where billionaire financier George Soros may come in, along with a group of other left-leaning philanthropists, many of them Jewish. In the relatively close-knit Middle East lobbying community, it is something of an open secret that this past September, Morton Halperin, who served in both the Nixon and Clinton administrations and is now director of U.S. advocacy for Soros' Open Society Institute, met with a group of lobbyists, political strategists and former politicians who are seeking to create a new well-funded, well-organized, left-leaning Israel lobby, as an alternative to AIPAC.
Salon
AIPAC's hawkishness, and their embrace of the Christian right has discomfited and alienated some Americans, particlularly in the Democratic Progressive movement.
The Rosen and Weissman trial is back in the news, too. Two former AIPAC employees are charged with conspiracy to commit espionage, passing State secrets to an Israeli Consular Official, a case in which a former staffer from Doug Feith's Office of Special Plans shop was sentenced to 12 years.
Looks like it is coming together now, without Soros, but with some Obama and Clinton advisors.
New PAC To Offer Pols A Dovish Mideast View
Aim of ‘J-Street Project’ is to counteract AIPAC lobbying on Capitol Hill.
While the structure of the new group is still in flux, sources say it is expected to raise money for congressional candidates who advocate a stronger U.S. role in ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Getty Images
by James D. Besser
Washington Correspondent
Almost a year after reports of an "alternative AIPAC" emerged in the middle of the Jewish political world, many of the same players are on the verge of announcing a revised initiative intended to get the message to politicians that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee is not the only pro-Israel voice in town, The Jewish Week has learned.
Dubbed the J-Street Project — "K Street" has become a cipher for Washington’s lobbying establishment and "J Street," missing from Washington’s downtown grid, has become a local "in" joke — the new project kicks off with a hush-hush fundraiser next Monday hosted by former Clinton administration official Jeremy Ben Ami and Daniel Levy, director of the Prospects for Peace Initiative of the Century Foundation. The group
will be publicly launched around the middle of April; organizers said they will not speak publicly about the group until then.
"For too long, the loudest American voices in political and policy debates have been those on the far right — often Republican neoconservatives or extreme Christian Zionists," according to the invitation. "J Street aims to change that. We are the first and only lobby and PAC (political action committee) dedicated to ensuring Israel’s security, changing the direction of American policy in the Middle East and opening up American political debate about Israel and the Middle East."
Several activists with ties to Democratic presidential contender Sen. Barack Obama are on the panel, as well. They include Robert Malley, whose involvement in Obama’s broad foreign policy advisory team has generated criticism from Republicans and some pro-Israel groups, and Alan Solomont, a top Obama fundraiser and major player in Democratic politics.
Several activists associated with the project say the goal is to offer lawmakers an alternative perspective that they say is closer to the consensus positions of American Jews than that offered by major pro-Israel groups like AIPAC, which they say have not supported aggressive U.S. peacemaking in the region.
"It will be separate from the dovish organizations and not competitive with them," said a source familiar with the discussions that created the new group. "The goal is to add another, more political layer to support for peace negotiations."
This source said an initial goal was to raise $1.5 million — presumably with the intention of having an impact in the current election cycle.
AIPAC’s preeminence on Capitol Hill — and the vital role played by networks of pro-Israel campaign givers who take cues from the lobby group — "misleads a lot of people into thinking there is only one ‘Jewish’ position on the Middle East," said University of Florida political scientist Ken Wald. "So it makes sense for those who don’t like that particular voice to do something more systematic than just talk about it. And the theory is that dollars are the currency of doing that."
It also faces a political challenge because "AIPAC has been recognized by non-Jewish politicians as the voice of the Jewish community," he said. An alternative voice "may be hard to sell to non-Jewish politicians who don’t want to be tarred as anti-Israel."
And the new group will face aggressive attacks from the Jewish right.
"I’m a realist; these people will get hammered and accused of being anti-Israel," Wald said. "A lot will have to do with the way they actually frame their arguments."
So, whaddya think? Is this a good thing?