Pretty much, at least according to M.J. Rosenberg, a former employee of AIPAC, the Israel Policy Forum and Media Matters.
Or more realistically, AIPAC may have taken out itself.
It is hard to exaggerate the damage inflicted on AIPAC by the congressional defeat of its efforts to torpedo the Iran nuclear deal. It is not as if AIPAC won’t live to fight again, because it will, but this defeat has ruptured the status quo, possibly forever.
Writing for
The Nation, Rosenberg suggests that the organization may have suffered a near-mortal blow, and that is a good thing for both the U.S. and Israel. AIPAC's effort to scuttle the multiparty accord meant to contain Iran's nuclear ambitions was unprecedented even for an organization whose efforts date back to the Ford Administration:
AIPAC, and its cutout Citizens For A Nuclear Free Iran, reportedly budgeted upwards of $20 million for a campaign that included flooding the airwaves with television spots; buying full-page newspaper ads, arranging fly-ins of AIPAC members to Washington, organizing demonstrations at offices of AIPAC-friendly members of Congress who were believed to be wavering, and ensuring that problematic legislators were officially warned by precisely the right donor.
AIPAC claims 100,000 members, a claim Rosenberg thinks is rather overstated. In Congress, however, it claims to speak for the country's 6 million or so Jews.
The truth, however, is that 82 percent of American Jews don't belong to any particular Jewish organization. Being Jewish, it seems, is quite sufficient. But you would not know this from AIPAC:
Legislators believe that AIPAC is the Jewish voice because (again, until now) that is what they heard from their Jewish donors. Although only 4 to 6 percent of American Jews cast their votes based on Israel policy, and even though Jews have voted consistently Democratic since 1928 (about 70 percent voted for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012), the donor class led by AIPAC has convinced politicians both that Jews are primarily interested in Israel and that their votes are in play, when, in reality, Jews are the most unwavering of Democrats, second only to African-Americans.
Rosenberg credits liberal Jewish organizations such as
J-Street with presenting a counterweight to AIPAC's efforts to depict the Jewish electorate as monolithically opposed to the Iran agreement, an assertion clearly belied by polling which actually showed Jews favoring the accord by
49 to 31%. President Obama elevated J-Street's profile by inviting them to share White House time with old guard Jewish organizations including AIPAC, the American Jewish Committee and the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations. That, according to Rosenberg, played a big part in fairly communicating the American Jewish position to Democratic Legislators, and any Republicans who cared to listen.
But in the end it was AIPAC (and Israel's Likud Party) that did itself in, specifically Benjamin Netanyahu's arrogant assumption that he could levy such wanton disrespect upon an American President as to arrange for a speech in the halls of Congress in an attempt to undermine U.S. policy. Although he may have found a willing class of sycophants in the Tea Party (whose adherents, if he'd bothered to check, pray for the Apocalyptic conversion of Jews in their fantastical visions of a Christian theocracy), his attempt to transform the Iran accord (and implicitly the power of this Administration to conduct foreign policy) into a polarizing political issue succeeded a little too well:
At that moment, the battle against the Iran agreement became a partisan battle: Likud and the Republicans against the American president and the Democrats. That never changed. In the end, the majority of Republicans in Congress lined up against the deal, while all but a couple dozen Democrats lined up for it. The Israelis and the Republicans either forgot that they would need Democrats to win or thought that, with sufficient inducements, they would come around. Ultimately, they lost that bet.
When the state of Israel was viciously and indiscriminately murdering civilians in Gaza less than two years ago it was hard to find any voices in the U.S. Congress or Senate willing to risk criticizing Israel's acts, because they were backed by the all-powerful AIPAC. In the face of a military media roadshow and propaganda-fest that rivaled the run-up to the Iraq War, only the presence of social media broke through to show the world what Israel was doing. Now with the Iran accord in place despite all of their efforts, AIPAC finds itself 20 million dollars poorer with little to show for it but a Republican Party filled with racist reactionaries who don't represent the vast majority of real American Jews. As Rosenberg points out, the Lobby's main focus over the past twenty years has been on maintaining and increasing sanctions against Iran. Even their efforts to prevent the recognition of a Palestinian state have "taken a back seat" to their aims on Iran. They've effectively
lost their biggest fight:
“They failed — they couldn’t even get a vote,” said Clifford Kupchan, an Iran expert and the chairman of the Eurasia Group, a consulting firm, who noted that Aipac had gone “all in” and tried everything to stop the deal. “It’s among the biggest setbacks for Aipac in recent memory.”
Rosenberg acknowledges that the real test of AIPAC's influence will be framed by their behavior in the 2016 elections. Will they continue to side with a Republican Party that seems dangerously eager to find a new class of people to hate every day, or will they come to their senses and try to mend fences with the people whose interests they're supposed to represent? Either way, Rosenberg believes that the "bipartisan" love affair with AIPAC has noticeably cooled with their embrace of the Republican right, an embrace that's still
playing itself out even as their efforts to stop the Iran accord have unraveled:
One thing is certain. The only way for AIPAC to remain the force it has been is by going after its enemies. And winning. And not just in 2016 but in 2018 and 2020, in a series of cycles of retribution. If it doesn’t do that, it will become a shell of its former self, only able to deliver noncontroversial votes on matters directly related to the survival of Israel and largely useless where US and Israeli security interests clash, as with Iran. That last category includes, most notably, the Palestinian issue, which has undermined US national interests for decades, but on which our hands have been tied by fear of AIPAC retribution.
At this point, no one can predict what will happen but I’ll venture a guess. AIPAC will not take on those who opposed it on Iran. On the contrary, it will try to get back in their good graces.
That would be the smart play. But lately AIPAC hasn't been too smart about anything.