JERUSALEM — The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the powerful pro-Israel lobby in Washington, plans to dispatch 300 of its members to Capitol Hill on Tuesday as part of a broad campaign to press Congress to back President Obama’s proposed strike on Syria, the group said Monday.
The push by the group, known as Aipac, which included asking its supporters to call members of Congress, came as Israeli newspapers reported Monday that President Obama urged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to get personally involved in lobbying Congress. The reports said that Mr. Netanyahu had called several members himself.
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Mr. Obama and his secretary of state have repeatedly invoked Israel in their arguments for a strike. The White House has reached out to Aipac, as well as to the Anti-Defamation League and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, who held a conference call on Monday to discuss lobbying strategy.
As a supporter of Israel -- though one who views Benjamin Netanyahu as a sort of cross between Max Schreck in
Eine Symphonie des Grauens and a used car salesman from his native suburban Philadelphia -- I find this to be an especially risky strategy.
It puts Israel between the President and a vastly unpopular potential Syrian strike and has the potential to cause the action to be viewed, in Congress and elsewhere, as Israel's war.
Probably no one outside the Beltway has any confidence that this thing will end well. When it all goes sour, some of the domestic backlash may land in Israel's lap.
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