2016 AIPAC Conference

Haaretz is Israel’s oldest daily newspaper, and is “known for its strongly left-wing and liberal stances on domestic and foreign issues.”

AIPAC is one of the most powerful political lobbying groups operating in the U.S. From Wikipedia:

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC, /ˈeɪpæk/ AY-pak) is a lobbying group that advocates pro-Israel policies to the Congress and Executive Branch of the United States…

One of several pro-Israel lobbying organizations in the U.S., AIPAC has more than 100,000 members, seventeen regional offices, and “a vast pool of donors.” It has been called “the most important organization affecting America’s relationship with Israel,” and one of the most powerful lobbying groups in the United States. The group does not raise funds for political candidates itself, but helps organize to channel money to candidates.

Its critics have stated it acts as an agent of the Israeli government with a “stranglehold” on the United States Congress with its power and influence. The group has been accused of being strongly allied with the Likud party of Israel, and the Republican Party in the US, but an AIPAC spokesman has called this a “malicious mischaracterization.”

Some years back, a couple of Ivy League professors dared to point out the dual-loyalties dynamic that AIPAC both represents and engenders in the U.S. political system. They were summarily demonized as…. drumroll… ‘anti-Semitic’.

Let us turn, then to Chemi Shalev’s anxious response (in Haaretz) to Donald Trump’s recent AIPAC speech in Washington D.C. Shalev’s op-ed is titled “Trump’s Hypnotic Gig at AIPAC Will Go Down in History – or Infamy“.

When, with respect to Gentile politicians, liberal Jews use the word “infamy”, it can mean only one thing. And we all know what it is.

“Like a Pied Piper,” reads Shalev’s byline, “the GOP front-runner’s pro-Israel magic tricks swept his Jewish audience from initial suspicion to outright enthusiasm.”

Wow. Quite unexpected. How could such a response occur, given how Republican politicians usually tell AIPAC what they want to hear?

On Monday night, Donald Trump showed how and why he might be elected president of the United States. Invited to participate in a candidate’s forum at AIPAC’s annual conference, he came, he spoke, he conquered. In future history, the 2016 AIPAC Policy Conference might yet be viewed as a watershed event on way to the Trump Era.

Trump entered the Verizon Center in Washington D.C. as a prime suspect but emerged clean as a whistle. In less than half an hour, he took a skeptical and apprehensive audience and turned them into gushing cheerleaders. He went into the arena as a racist demagogue but soon came out as an ostensibly serious contender. He faced a tough test of his mettle but passed it with flying colors and hardly any effort. He came away with a kosher “K” certificate, issued by one of the most powerful and influential organizations in America…

Gushing cheerleaders? That’s quite the superlative. What, I pray tell, did The Donald do or say to cause such… respect?

Trump is usually an undisciplined speaker who lacks concentration and focus, allowing his stream of consciousness to narrate his thoughts and his powers of improvisation to phrase them. So it was that less than an hour before he came to AIPAC, which focuses on American aid to Israel, Trump raised the bizarre demand that Israel, like other rich American allies, repay the financial assistance it had received from America. Hey, it just popped into my head, Trump seemed to indicate, so it must be a good idea…

Jews aren’t a stupid people. I’m guessing they were quite aware of DT’s new-fangled notion that Israel needs to reimburse U.S. taxpayers for their defense of Israel, much as DT has argued that NATO allies and South Pacific allies ought to do the same.

A Jew, after all, understands the concepts of hard bartering. While Trump may be the author of “The Art of the Deal”, the Tribe has long dwarfed any goyim in the craft of deal-making.

Shalev, however, doesn’t see it this way.

No, to Shalev and his ilk, DT is a flim-flam man! Just like the U.S.’s Dem/MSM/GOPE Establishment tells us all every day.

In honor of AIPAC, however, [Trump] undertook an extreme makeover, reading a tightly formulated speech from the kind of teleprompter that he usually mocks…

So… is it the style or the substance that Shalev is taking exception to?

A friend who watched the proceedings on television said he felt the need to take a shower to get the stain off. But then I met a religious family walking back to their hotel, engaged in a deep debate over the evening’s speeches. I eavesdropped just as they reached a family decision to transfer their votes from Cruz to Trump. When I asked them why, they said because “he’ll be good for Israel.” And how did they know that, I persisted, and they looked at me as if I was an idiot. “Didn’t you hear his speech?” they asked, and rightly so. I saw and heard the whole thing, and still find it hard to believe.

The “he’ll be good for Israel” sentiment is, of course, not questioned. Only the veracity of which U.S. political candidate will be best for Israel.

Imagine, for a second, if the U.S.’s foreign policy was this explicitly oriented around what is “good for white Christians America”.

***

Let us juxtapose Shalev’s op-ed against this blogger’s in-the-field journalism, which is most impressive. She’s interviewed Tribe members outside the 2016 AIPAC Conference, rhetorically posing her Jewish interlocutors with Netanyahu administration comments guised as Trump comments.

The responses are quite enlightening, no pun intended, given one of her interviewees spitting out the stock ‘Jews are a light unto the nations’ narrative they frequently use to justify their sense of ethnic solidarity paraded as moral indignation. (This particular Tribe member also characterizes the Israeli army as the ‘most moral’ army in the world, a natural logical conclusion for those holding the ‘light unto the nations’ premise.)

One young woman said of Trump, “He’s terrible. He incites racist attitudes.” When asked, “What do you think about Trump’s comments comparing migrants to cancer?” she responded with disgust, “He’s awful. I hate Trump.”

But it was Israeli culture minister Miri Regev, not Trump, who compared African refugees to “a cancer,” a statement that 52 percent of Israeli Jews agreed with in one survey…

I revealed to the young woman that Regev was the source of that statement and added that Netanyahu had recently called for surrounding all of Israel with walls “to protect ourselves from wild beasts.”

“I think you have to step back for a second,” the young woman snapped. “Israel is next to Syria, which is, as you know, going through a civil war. So when [Netanyahu] says ‘wild beasts’ he means jihadis who can potentially be coming into Israel. So I think you need to be very distinctive about that.”

Context is important when discussing Israel’s responses to illegal immigration.

It is not important when discussing goyim responses to illegal immigration in the goyim’s indigenously Christian countries.

The cognitive dissonance on display was startling as one anti-Trump liberal after another transformed into a defender of hate-speech uttered by Israelis, reflecting the alarming degree to which Arabs have been dehumanized in the minds of many of Israel’s North American supporters.

A woman from Montgomery, Maryland, stood outside the Verizon Center holding a sign that read, “Jews against Trump because we’ve seen this before.”

Though outraged by Trump’s anti-Muslim rhetoric and his pledge to build a wall along the US-Mexico border, she seemed to keep her distance from the larger protests against both Trump and Israel. It was soon clear why.

Asked if she was similarly disturbed by Netanyahu’s “wild beasts” comment, her tone changed and she became defensive.

“I didn’t hear the context,” she said.

“Is there a context where that comment would be okay?” I asked.

She insisted she couldn’t respond without hearing the statement in full and verifying it for herself.

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