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| Outside Convention Center the night of AIPAC's closing plenary |
AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, just had its annual convention in Washington, D.C. It was attended by 13,000 people, including 400 of our elected Congress people. President Obama addressed the attendees to praise Israel, as was expected, and to make his case for delaying an attack on Iran. He did not mention Palestine and Israel’s continuing occupation and rape of their land.
I was outside the convention, with a few hundred other protestors, to remind AIPAC and the President that Palestine exists, under Israeli occupation, and to say no to AIPAC’s loud and frantic call for war on Iran. AIPAC is powerful, maybe even more powerful than the president of the United States, it has no use for Palestinians, and it wants a war on Iran.
AIPAC says it is speaking for Israel’s interests, and that whatever Israel wants, Israel should have. If Israel wants to continue to steal land from Palestinians in order to expand Israel, it should take as much land as it wants and ignore international law and human rights issues. And if Israel wants a war on Iran, it should have a war, and the U.S. should help to fight it, over and above the $3 billion a year military aid package Israel already receives from us.
Let us be clear that when AIPAC says “Israel”, it means the right-wing, hard-line political and military leadership – not the people of Israel, who have no more voice in what their government is doing than 99% of American people have in what our government is doing. In fact, I contend that AIPAC does not have your interests, my interests nor Israel’s interests in mind. Its narrow mission is to benefit a very small (1% ?) , already powerful elite both here and in Israel that is using its vast economic resources to achieve its own agenda.
One agenda item is to use the weapons we sell Israel to bomb Gaza, demolish homes and water cisterns in the West Bank, patrol the checkpoints, and in every way possible try to drive Palestinians away in order to fulfill the Zionist project of possessing the entire historic Palestine for Jews. U.S. support of this agenda has cost us our moral authority in the Muslim world.
Another of AIPAC’s agendas is war on Iran. But, do we Americans want another war, whether on Iran, or Syria, or Somalia, or anywhere? Or is the price too high? We are already paying for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with our state budget cuts to schools, libraries, roads, bridges., and all of our social services. We are paying with deaths and traumatization of our military personnel. We are paying, as well, with our guilty consciences over the thousands, even millions of civilian casualties. And the Planet is paying with the rarely-mentioned pollution of land and water caused by war. Do we want more of the same?
Are we going to be fooled by the fear-mongering that the war-profiteers and the media dish out? Or might we start thinking for ourselves about the costs of war and whether war will make us any safer? I am scared when AIPAC uses its lobbying power to push for war, and I am only slightly comforted by the full page ad in the March 5 NYTimes, signed by 5 U.S. Generals, and three other ranking military and intelligence officers. It states in part: “Military action at this stage is not only unnecessary, it is dangerous—for the United States and for Israel. We urge you (Mr. President) to resist the pressure for a war of choice with Iran.”
There are many reasons not to attack Iran. One that catches my attention is the probability of nuclear contamination if a bomb strikes one of the facilities where Iran says they are building a nuclear power plant.
President Obama told AIPAC this week that, so far, Iran has not decided to build a nuclear weapon, and until he understands otherwise, he will pursue the route of negotiations and sanctions. But AIPAC wants war, not negotiations. We must tell the President and Congress that AIPAC does not speak for us. A war of choice is a bad choice, but it may come soon if we don’t speak up to prevent it.
(Written as a commentary for the Greenfield, MA newspaper, "The Recorder")
