Only a "For America" PAC Can Stop the Madness

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Informed Comment

I want to follow up today on my postings over the weekend on how organizing to defend progressive congressional representatives and punish reactionary ones is far superior to street protests as political action on the Israeli-Palestinian issue.
Cont'd
People wrote to defend street protests or minded that I said I was annoyed. I stand by what I said. Street protests have not stopped the US Congress from turning Israel into a massive arms arsenal in the Middle East or from granting it $3 billion a year, in part for such military purposes. (Israel has received the lion's share of US foreign aid in recent decades, even though people in Rwanda need the help more and even though the Israeli per capita income in the early zeroes has been something like $17,000 a year, more than Potugal or Poland and similar to Greece.) Protests have not stopped US complicity in the creeping Israeli colonization of the West Bank, including the area around Jerusalem. They have not stopped the 2006 or 2009 wars of their client on weak and virtually defenseless opponents such as the south Beirut tenement buildings or Gaza hospitals.
Street protests have their uses as a means of creating a political movement, but they are helpless in this case because the important decisions are taken on Capitol Hill. I wrote on Saturday:

'Europe has ceded dealing with the Israelis to the United States. The people of the United States have ceded dealing with the Israelis to the US Congress. The US Congress generally abdicates its responsibilities when faced with large powerful single-issue lobbies such as . . . the Israel lobbies. So Congress has ceded Israel, and indeed, most Middle East, policy to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and its myriad organizational supporters, from the Southern Baptist churches to the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs. The Israel lobbies take their cue on what is good policy from the Israeli government and the Likud Party. So, US Israel policy is driven by . . . the Israeli rightwing. That is why Congress voted 309 to five to support Israel's war on the people of Gaza, with 22 abstaining. '

The US Senate and the US House of Representatives are not afraid of street protests in San Francisco. And why should they be? What sort of threat is it to them, that we say if they don't change their legislation we will . . . walk in the street? Their response would be, "Make sure you have comfortable shoes; now, I have to see this nice lobbyist in my office in a thousand dollar suit and alligator shoes who has an enormous check for my current political campaign."
The representative would say to us, "I want to be reelected. You cannot stop that by walking in the street, nor can you help me win by doing so. This televangelist from an Israel lobby, in contrast, is going to help me buy loads of television commercials dissing my opponents in the next election. And, if I don't help the gentleman out, he's threatening to give the money instead to my rival and unseat me. So you'll forgive me if I turn my back on you and wish you well with your, uh, walking. But I've got an election to win, rather than to lose, and you are irrelevant to that task."
nd the big oak door in the Dirksen building slams in our faces.
The US Congress is the best proof of evolution. Its members are constantly subjected to unnatural selection by single-issue lobbies.. Run for office demanding gun control, and you will likely lose, because the National Rifle Association will arrange for its members to fund your opponent's campaign. If you do win, the NRA will redouble its efforts for the next time, which if you are a representative, is only 2 years later. After a while, there just aren't a lot of strong gun control proponents in Congress.
It is the same with the Israel lobbies, which are just as single-minded. We have had people in Congress who dared criticize Israel. They were Paul Findley, Charles Percy, William Fulbright, Roger Jepson, Pete McCloskey, Earl Hilliard, and Cynthia McKinney. They were all successfully ousted by AIPAC-coordinated campaigns. US political races are close and candidates have flaws, so AIPAC often denies in public that it made the difference and implies with high dudgeon that there is something wrong with alleging that it did. In private, AIPAC officials boast endlessly on the HIll about how no one messes with them and survives.
The reason AIPAC and its constituencies among the Evangelicals and American Likudniks has been so successful is that there is virtually no countervailing political force. Madison and other Founding Fathers set up the US, as Ian Lustick has argued, on the assumption that on most important issues there would be opposing factions who would check each other in the legislature. The drawback of their system is that when there is only one effective faction on an issue, it completely dominates politically. Madison's system worked to prolong the heyday of Big Tobacco far beyond what was reasonable. Anti-smoking campaigners who knew that smoking kills you dead could not make headway with Congress because the tobacco-growing and cigarette industries would counter-lobby.
But on some issues there is no one on the other side of it to lobby and threaten Congressmen. Thus, there was not much precentage until recently in pushing for an end to the boycott on Communist Cuba, since the Florida Cuba lobby would punish you politically and virtually no one would reward you.

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