The American Israeli Political Action Committee, known more succinctly as AIPAC has long been the dominant force in Washington concerning American policy towards Israel. It has thousands upon thousands of members and ridiculous sums of money to keep it active in political circles and thereby influential with the President, Congress and its staff. It has done many good things for the small state of Israel that sits among many autocratic governments in the Middle East, but it has also taken a fundamentalist, hard-right veer in its policy goals recently. Many Jewish liberals have been disappointed in them recently, and now there is going to be an alternative.
From The Washington Post:
The lobbying group will be known as J Street and the political action group as JStreetPAC. The executive director for both will be Jeremy Ben-Ami, a former domestic policy adviser in the Clinton White House.
"The definition of what it means to be pro-Israel has come to diverge from pursuing a peace settlement," said Alan Solomont, a prominent Democratic Party fundraiser involved in the initiative. In recent years, he said, "We have heard the voices of neocons, and right-of-center Jewish leaders and Christian evangelicals, and the mainstream views of the American Jewish community have not been heard."
Solomont is a top fundraiser for the presidential campaign of Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), but the organizers include supporters and fundraisers for both Obama and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.). Many prominent figures in the American Jewish left, former lawmakers and U.S. government officials, and several prominent Israeli figures, as well as activists who have raised money for the Democracy Alliance and MoveOn.org, are also involved.
Too often, American Jews are grouped together as having one voice concerning Israel. Like Israel, there are many diverging views on what to do about Gaza, the West Bank and Arab-Israeli relations and specifically how America should be involved with those geopolitical affairs. For too long AIPAC has been the only "voice" in Washington and the Christian Right's influence on it has not been good for the multitude of political views concerning America and Israel. Although J Street PAC is dwarfed by AIPAC now, it is only their first year, so in time, this group can lead the way in letting every viewpoint be heard on the Hill.
|