In Pelosi stand on the war in Iraq bothers Israel lobby, the SF Chronicle reported the speaker received a “cool response,” including scattered boos, from AIPAC yesterday, “after she characterized as a failure a war many of them support.”

Could AIPAC, which enjoys a kind of protective mantle because of its public Jewish identity (its supporter base includes many non-Jews), possibly be more out of touch with American Jews? At 77% opposed, our people say no to the war in Iraq in percentages greater than any other major religious group in America.

The fact is that AIPAC doesn’t just ignore what American Jews want, they think of us as an impediment.

I’ve personally encountered what I can only call blackmail-the lengths to which AIPAC will go to make sure groups like Jewish Voice for Peace can’t be heard. They actually once threatened to get the funding yanked from a respected Jewish organization program (which by and large could be considered a friend of AIPAC) if they dared allow me or anyone from Jewish Voice for Peace through the door. (I was to talk about the numerous Israeli peace groups like Rabbis for Human Rights and Machsom Watch that work for peace, justice and reconciliation.) And it worked.

No one was more disgusted by the whole affair than the organizer who invited both me and AIPAC to speak. But the threat of destroying an entire program, and one person’s livelihood, proved too potent.
But it gets worse.

As if it weren’t enough to frequently use the charge (and its well known variants like self-hating Jew, beyond the pale, anti-American, anti-Israel,pro-Palestinian terrorist, blah blah blah) to shut-up honest and important discourse…

The AIPAC-Hagee embarrassment is just one more example of how willing the pro-Israel lobby is to completely overlook real anti-Semites who stare them in the face–when it meets their needs to support the Israeli right’s hawkish, take-no -prisoners approach to “peacemaking”.

It’s hard to understand how any of this serves Jews–or anyone for that matter.

Check out Max Blumenthal over at HuffPo who has even more on AIPAC’s favorite “anti-Semitic Holocaust revisionist,” Sarah Posner’s The Goy Who cried Wolf at The American Prospect, and Richard Silverstein’s AIPAC’s Pact with the Christian Zionist Devil at Tikun Olam.

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