Last Spring we were presented with the unseemly sight of a foreign leader insulting a sitting president before both houses of Congress. On May 24th House Majority leader Eric Cantor escorted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu into the congressional chambers in what could easily have been mistaken for a State of the Union Address by the President. What made the display particularly unseemly was that Netanyahu used the opportunity to excoriate President Obama for his tepid criticism of Israel’s illegal settlements while the President was in London.
An article in the New York Times guessed at the motives: “With elections coming up next year, the lawmakers appeared eager to demonstrate their support for Israel as part of an effort to secure backing from one of the country’s most powerful constituencies, American Jews.” The article failed to mention that most congressional Zionists are fundamentalist Christians, not Jews, for whom Israel is not just another country, but a veritable Biblical Disneyland.
All this is bad enough, but now they’re at it again. This week we learn that, instead of meeting with constituents during the Summer recess, a fifth of American Congressmen will be accepting free junkets to Israel funded by the American Israel Education Foundation, one of AIPAC’s many PACs. According to the Jerusalem Post, 81 Congressmen, 55 Republicans and 26 Democrats, will visit Israel. Significantly, the number includes half of all freshman Republicans. The Republican delegation will be headed by Eric Cantor and the Democrats by Steny Hoyer.
Not to be outdone, the Israel Project, a right-wing group known for its vicious Muslim-bashing, is bringing 18 American ambassadors to Israel as well.
All this precedes an anticipated call for a Palestinian state at the United Nations in September. Similar to a call for Israel’s creation 60-some years ago, also at the UN, the call for a Palestinian state is largely symbolic because it is expected that the Obama administration, like Congress, fully subservient to a pro-Israel lobby, will cast a veto. This call for Palestinian statehood — without American “facilitation” — is a final recognition of the fact that the United States has been consistently biased and is no longer relevant to the peace process.
So, while the American economy is in shambles, a motley group of American Congressmen will be getting tans at the Dead Sea, a militarily-controlled area off-limits to Palestinians. They will be touring Jerusalem, visiting Tel Aviv, and possibly popping into Ramallah to visit a Palestinian caretaker government most Palestinians hold in contempt. They’ll be meeting with Israeli generals who will tell them how Israel is stopping terrorism in its backyard so that we don’t have it in ours.
If you do a little research online, you can find out about these junkets. According to legistorm.com, a number of groups send congressmen to Israel for these — I wouldn’t call them serious fact-finding missions — vacations. The American Israel Education Foundation is the major organizer, but other groups fund similar “educational” trips: the American Jewish Committee, Anti-Defamation League, the Brookings Institution, Center for Middle East Peace & Economic Cooperation, Friends of the Israel Defense Forces, IDT Corp., the Jewish Community Relations Council, Makhteshim Agan, New America Foundation, Project Interchange, the Republican Jewish Coalition, numerous local Jewish Federations, Tel Aviv University, Telos Group, United Jewish Appeals, and the World Jewish Congress. In all, Legistorm has recorded 1020 of these junkets to Israel since roughly 2001.
In contrast, there have been 2 fact-finding missions to Palestine.
It’s bad enough that Congress is being diverted from doing its job of fixing the economy by these trips and that the Likud gets more attention than constituents, but the worst part is that we are letting a foreign nation and its boosters corrupt and bias our foreign policy. In exchange for the campaign donations they disburse, these lobbyists assure that our Congressmen keep giving Israel $8 million a day in military assistance and producing vetoes at the United Nations.
All this will eventually result in a backlash, not only against Israel, but unfortunately against Jewish Americans too, whether they objected to this madness or supported it. It’s time to say: enough. And time to do the right thing and abstain from vetoing a Palestinian state in September.
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