The devil went down to DC, but our politicians took the golden fiddle in exchange for their souls and turned their eyes away from the genocide. Thanks for this expose of how little it costs to buy mass murder, ethic cleansing and good old Georgia style apartheid. The moral is to stop inequality and not create millionaires, billionaires and triliionaires?
Well stated, Gladwyn! We never got back to "we are the 99%." In large part that movement ended due to the challenge of building a multi racial coalition. Occupy looked more to class, and yet Black Lives Matter exploded on the heels of OWS. Some of us had attempted unsuccessfully to unite these interests around the issue of debt at the end of Occupy. It was specifically due to racism/unexamined white identity that we failed. It was because of this failure that we looked to Palestine. Sigh. And here we are more than a decade later.
Thank you Pamela for your clear and thorough exploration of this question and the central role AIPAC plays in the answer. Understanding the seemingly unbreakable hold this organization and it’s affiliates have on the discourse and policy from elected leaders to institutions and even industry and the ways in which its organizational reach permeates the very fabric of society is a critical first step to widening the crack you speak of.
Thanks, Christa! I agree. We keep hearing "AIPAC" but the money part is just the beginning of how they have truly captured our government and our minds. Former President Clinton made some of the most bizarre, misinformed and racist remarks in Michigan a couple of days ago and you can hear AIPAC in every word. I am worried that if the Democrats pull this election off, the path to ridding ourselves of AIPAC becomes harder because they will take the lesson away that they can win in spite of the dissent within their own party. I think this will cause them to move further to the right and we will be left even further behind in real organizing toward getting this "democracy" to work for the people here in the US and to be responsible in engaging with the rest of the world.
So true, President Clinton’s remarks were indicative of the longstanding influence of AIPAC but also the tremendous gap between that narrative and the current and historical reality on the ground for Palestinians. What an insult to his audience to be so clueless and out of touch. Instead of honoring the tremendous loss and suffering Palestinians continue to face due to US backing of a policy that privileges Israeli lives over Palestinian lives in their own homeland, he sought sympathy for the settler communities that literally stand guard along the Gaza envelope located on Palestinian village lands seized in 1948. Those forcibly displaced families from the Nakba remain trapped in the Gaza Strip and face atrocities committed by Israel’s military assault on their lives and livelihoods in the name of self-defense. All the more disheartening coming from a president who is credited with attempting to find peaceful resolution between adversaries with the historic handshake between Arafat and Rabin over three decades ago. Instead of wisdom and acknowledgement of the need for a complete shift in US policy, he sought sympathy for Israel’s relentless policy of revenge that knows no limits and threatens to pull us all into WWIII or at least the destruction and subjugation of the entire Middle East. You are right that his comments further alienate the Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim communities in the US and those who stand in solidarity with them which threatens our capacity to come together as Americans and have a more effective policy that honors the values of freedom and democracy we allegedly stand for.
Perfectly put. Clinton knows better, and has taken a side. The Democrats have taken a side. They don't want anyone to know that Palestinians still have the keys to their homes that were illegally and immorally stolen. I've heard Harris talk about the rave as if she hasn't a clue how deeply offensive it was to have a dance party adjacent to the largest open air prison in the world. They rely on us remaining in their bizarre, fact free ideological bubble. Free Palestine. Palestine will free us all.
Thank you for going down this rabbit hole and sharing with us. I just shared your work with my 78-year-old mother who hates what Israel ("Netanyahu") is doing in Gaza, West Bank and Lebanon but feels sheust vote for Harris. Here is a link to a helpful talk given by Gabriel Rockhill about how demo lcratic liberalism tolerates fascism and both cooperate in capitalism, imperialism and genocide:
Thanks so much, Zach! I listened to the first couple of minutes and can't wait to watch the rest of the video. Fascism is a fascinating topic and I really want to learn more about it. I hear the word getting thrown around a lot and I was tempted to refer to AIPAC's regime as a kind of "totalitarianism" but I think that would be incorrect, technically. But in some limited way, it is actually totalitarian and that is why I think looking at movements that resisted these kinds of regimes successfully will be important to our individual and collective consideration on how we address this incredibly serious situation. The world needs us to course correct here and I hope we are up to the challenge.
Excellent article. A step by step analysis of AIPAC’s tentacles in both foreign and domestic policies. Even for those familiar with their influence, it is still breathtaking. Thank you.
I’ve believed for sometime now there were more dots to connect than I knew or could even imagine. This articulates layers I only suspected in a limited, mostly surface level way. This will take some time to process and work through my own propaganda-indoctrinated mindset & extra-cultivated belief systems.
But, this is what so much of my life requires these last many years now. As difficult and dark as things may be, light like this helps keeps hope generationally in view.
I had the same feeling. We've been talking about AIPAC's outsized influence for years. But that conversation really elides how deep they go - particularly how deep their tentacles go into our own minds and perception of what is really happening throughout the Middle East. We're not very good a looking beyond 4 years here in the US. I would argue that this kind of constant lesser of evils choice that AIPAC (amongst others) set up is a big part of why. But this problem is not realistically solvable without possibly looking beyond our lives.
Damn. This is excellent and so far down the AIPAC trail that I’m going to have to come back to this to unpack it all the way. I want more people to know all of this. So I’ll share it with my community. Whoever wins on Tuesday, AIPAC has already won.
There's a lot to unpack. I really thought of AIPAC as any other outsized lobbying group, but it is so sooo much deeper. Just on the political front, you can't get past the first elections you run for without being in AIPACs pocket. We really have a long term problem and I do hope that AIPAC ends up with a problem on Tuesday: that the Democrats can no longer win elections while killing on their behalf. If the Democrats believe that they lost the election to Trump because of the bind that their allegiance with AIPAC has put them in, it will at least be a strike from the public that they will have to deal with. If the Democrats win the lesson will be that the public really does care more about grocery prices than actual beheaded babies. In any case I agree 100% - no matter who wins, we lose.
Pam, going to re-up this excellent breakdown of yours. Thank you for continuing to educate and engage us with FACTS in our post-fact, ahistorical society. Truly appreciate your work.
Thanks, Cheryl!! AIPAC continues to shock. I should update this article because they have actually begun to update their methods now that so many are on to them...
It's taken me several days, Pamela, to get a chance to properly peruse this welcome and stunning post. I, too, assumed a fairly comprehensive basic understanding of the nature and impact of AIPAC on our politics. What your writing and obviously thorough research reveals is nothing short of astonishing and shocking. The AIPAC infection and influence goes much deeper than my wildest imaginings. The so-called United Democracy Project's sinister influence is partially encapsulated in this paragraph, in particular - one of several jaw-dropping revelations: "The pro-Israel lobby’s influence is further cemented by an interconnected network of PR agencies, media affiliations, and research institutions that cultivate public sentiment. Through partnerships with think tanks and targeted media campaigns, AIPAC and its allies shape not just policy but the very discourse around Israel and Palestine, insulating Congress from the kind of critical debate that defines other foreign policy issues." The ill-advised and anti-democratic (and ultimately treasonous) capitulation to oligarchy in the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision has facilitated this capture of our "leadership" and institutions by the flood of capital that has rendered the U.S. a "puppet regime." Bought and paid for. This helps to explain the seemingly incomprehensible willingness of the American state to so blatantly, shamefully, so despicably and cruelly enable and defend the perpetration of an ongoing holocaust that has heartlessly murdered well over 100 thousand people to date, including many tens of thousands of women and children. The cowardice, the immorality, the cold-blooded greed and contemptible inhumanity exhibited by this insane and corrupt cabal of our "leaders" willing to indulge in mass slaughter just to line their pockets is beyond contemptible. I could go on - you make so many important and damning points - but I'll just say that your articulate scholarship and courageous, revealing journalistic efforts provide such a valuable understanding of the real nature of our contemporary geopolitical realities. Thank you!
Thank you Pamela, great read! The thing that struck me the most is the longevity of this pro-Israeli/Zionist movement. If nothing else, they are extremely patient. I truly hope that the proverbial “king´s got no clothes on.” gains momentum. What we have seen of the Zionists over the past year particularly, has exposed them to the eyes of the world. This will not be unseen and should not be unseen. I do believe, as MLK, Jr. once so beautifully proclaimed, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”!
I sure hope that King was right, Christopher! Yes, we need to be willing to build and sustain movements much longer than the electoral cycles. Going back to MLK, the first March on Washington was planned in 1941 coming out of the New Negro Movement, which was an arts and culture movement - of course still political, but a different pass at solving the same problem.
Thank you for this thorough exposé of AIPAC and its many tentacles. It seems to me that the US must have been a very willing partner of the Israel lobby all through the last 70 years or none of this would have been possible. The US MIC-led power structure sees Israel as crucial to the US's "national interests", so it wouldn't surprise me if it were directly behind AIPAC gaining so much influence. AIPAC may in essence provide plausible deniability for the real power interests in the US to get what they want.
Yeh, Bob... 100%. I would need to go a few levels deeper to really understand how their internal thinking developed. When you form a new nation and you think through what is needed to make the people you form it on top of invisible...when your movement (Zionism) has already been in motion for 100 years prior in an active sense and when the ideas behind it have been part of the ether for maybe another 1000 years or more (Christian Zionism)... I suspect it may be easier to see decades into the future and simply take one step at a time as it makes most sense. And this is important to incorporate and perhaps it's absent from my article - that Zionism as a movement and as a reason for Israel in and of itself was growing alongside AIPAC. It was growing amongst the Christians who are the biggest donors, and it was growing in response to Palestinian resistance and the reality of developing the mindset in a people that justified the unthinkable endgame.
The text we all needed ❤️
The devil went down to DC, but our politicians took the golden fiddle in exchange for their souls and turned their eyes away from the genocide. Thanks for this expose of how little it costs to buy mass murder, ethic cleansing and good old Georgia style apartheid. The moral is to stop inequality and not create millionaires, billionaires and triliionaires?
Well stated, Gladwyn! We never got back to "we are the 99%." In large part that movement ended due to the challenge of building a multi racial coalition. Occupy looked more to class, and yet Black Lives Matter exploded on the heels of OWS. Some of us had attempted unsuccessfully to unite these interests around the issue of debt at the end of Occupy. It was specifically due to racism/unexamined white identity that we failed. It was because of this failure that we looked to Palestine. Sigh. And here we are more than a decade later.
Thank you Pamela for your clear and thorough exploration of this question and the central role AIPAC plays in the answer. Understanding the seemingly unbreakable hold this organization and it’s affiliates have on the discourse and policy from elected leaders to institutions and even industry and the ways in which its organizational reach permeates the very fabric of society is a critical first step to widening the crack you speak of.
Thanks, Christa! I agree. We keep hearing "AIPAC" but the money part is just the beginning of how they have truly captured our government and our minds. Former President Clinton made some of the most bizarre, misinformed and racist remarks in Michigan a couple of days ago and you can hear AIPAC in every word. I am worried that if the Democrats pull this election off, the path to ridding ourselves of AIPAC becomes harder because they will take the lesson away that they can win in spite of the dissent within their own party. I think this will cause them to move further to the right and we will be left even further behind in real organizing toward getting this "democracy" to work for the people here in the US and to be responsible in engaging with the rest of the world.
So true, President Clinton’s remarks were indicative of the longstanding influence of AIPAC but also the tremendous gap between that narrative and the current and historical reality on the ground for Palestinians. What an insult to his audience to be so clueless and out of touch. Instead of honoring the tremendous loss and suffering Palestinians continue to face due to US backing of a policy that privileges Israeli lives over Palestinian lives in their own homeland, he sought sympathy for the settler communities that literally stand guard along the Gaza envelope located on Palestinian village lands seized in 1948. Those forcibly displaced families from the Nakba remain trapped in the Gaza Strip and face atrocities committed by Israel’s military assault on their lives and livelihoods in the name of self-defense. All the more disheartening coming from a president who is credited with attempting to find peaceful resolution between adversaries with the historic handshake between Arafat and Rabin over three decades ago. Instead of wisdom and acknowledgement of the need for a complete shift in US policy, he sought sympathy for Israel’s relentless policy of revenge that knows no limits and threatens to pull us all into WWIII or at least the destruction and subjugation of the entire Middle East. You are right that his comments further alienate the Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim communities in the US and those who stand in solidarity with them which threatens our capacity to come together as Americans and have a more effective policy that honors the values of freedom and democracy we allegedly stand for.
Perfectly put. Clinton knows better, and has taken a side. The Democrats have taken a side. They don't want anyone to know that Palestinians still have the keys to their homes that were illegally and immorally stolen. I've heard Harris talk about the rave as if she hasn't a clue how deeply offensive it was to have a dance party adjacent to the largest open air prison in the world. They rely on us remaining in their bizarre, fact free ideological bubble. Free Palestine. Palestine will free us all.
Thank you for going down this rabbit hole and sharing with us. I just shared your work with my 78-year-old mother who hates what Israel ("Netanyahu") is doing in Gaza, West Bank and Lebanon but feels sheust vote for Harris. Here is a link to a helpful talk given by Gabriel Rockhill about how demo lcratic liberalism tolerates fascism and both cooperate in capitalism, imperialism and genocide:
https://youtu.be/lmo_GaZIwRc?si=M2Viu8n18HLHT2Um
Thanks so much, Zach! I listened to the first couple of minutes and can't wait to watch the rest of the video. Fascism is a fascinating topic and I really want to learn more about it. I hear the word getting thrown around a lot and I was tempted to refer to AIPAC's regime as a kind of "totalitarianism" but I think that would be incorrect, technically. But in some limited way, it is actually totalitarian and that is why I think looking at movements that resisted these kinds of regimes successfully will be important to our individual and collective consideration on how we address this incredibly serious situation. The world needs us to course correct here and I hope we are up to the challenge.
You might also be interested in this talk by the late Sheldon Wolin on Inverted Totalitarianism:
https://youtu.be/BesbZDeZeTE?si=mWXyrUeshnXpFzCT
Chris Hedges talks about Wolin in some of his videos.
Will check it out! Thanks so much, Zach!
Excellent article. A step by step analysis of AIPAC’s tentacles in both foreign and domestic policies. Even for those familiar with their influence, it is still breathtaking. Thank you.
Thanks for the positive feedback, Denise! It was far more extensive than I realized. Breathtaking is the perfect word for it.
I’ve believed for sometime now there were more dots to connect than I knew or could even imagine. This articulates layers I only suspected in a limited, mostly surface level way. This will take some time to process and work through my own propaganda-indoctrinated mindset & extra-cultivated belief systems.
But, this is what so much of my life requires these last many years now. As difficult and dark as things may be, light like this helps keeps hope generationally in view.
Thank you.
I had the same feeling. We've been talking about AIPAC's outsized influence for years. But that conversation really elides how deep they go - particularly how deep their tentacles go into our own minds and perception of what is really happening throughout the Middle East. We're not very good a looking beyond 4 years here in the US. I would argue that this kind of constant lesser of evils choice that AIPAC (amongst others) set up is a big part of why. But this problem is not realistically solvable without possibly looking beyond our lives.
Damn. This is excellent and so far down the AIPAC trail that I’m going to have to come back to this to unpack it all the way. I want more people to know all of this. So I’ll share it with my community. Whoever wins on Tuesday, AIPAC has already won.
There's a lot to unpack. I really thought of AIPAC as any other outsized lobbying group, but it is so sooo much deeper. Just on the political front, you can't get past the first elections you run for without being in AIPACs pocket. We really have a long term problem and I do hope that AIPAC ends up with a problem on Tuesday: that the Democrats can no longer win elections while killing on their behalf. If the Democrats believe that they lost the election to Trump because of the bind that their allegiance with AIPAC has put them in, it will at least be a strike from the public that they will have to deal with. If the Democrats win the lesson will be that the public really does care more about grocery prices than actual beheaded babies. In any case I agree 100% - no matter who wins, we lose.
Pam, going to re-up this excellent breakdown of yours. Thank you for continuing to educate and engage us with FACTS in our post-fact, ahistorical society. Truly appreciate your work.
Thanks, Cheryl!! AIPAC continues to shock. I should update this article because they have actually begun to update their methods now that so many are on to them...
It's taken me several days, Pamela, to get a chance to properly peruse this welcome and stunning post. I, too, assumed a fairly comprehensive basic understanding of the nature and impact of AIPAC on our politics. What your writing and obviously thorough research reveals is nothing short of astonishing and shocking. The AIPAC infection and influence goes much deeper than my wildest imaginings. The so-called United Democracy Project's sinister influence is partially encapsulated in this paragraph, in particular - one of several jaw-dropping revelations: "The pro-Israel lobby’s influence is further cemented by an interconnected network of PR agencies, media affiliations, and research institutions that cultivate public sentiment. Through partnerships with think tanks and targeted media campaigns, AIPAC and its allies shape not just policy but the very discourse around Israel and Palestine, insulating Congress from the kind of critical debate that defines other foreign policy issues." The ill-advised and anti-democratic (and ultimately treasonous) capitulation to oligarchy in the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision has facilitated this capture of our "leadership" and institutions by the flood of capital that has rendered the U.S. a "puppet regime." Bought and paid for. This helps to explain the seemingly incomprehensible willingness of the American state to so blatantly, shamefully, so despicably and cruelly enable and defend the perpetration of an ongoing holocaust that has heartlessly murdered well over 100 thousand people to date, including many tens of thousands of women and children. The cowardice, the immorality, the cold-blooded greed and contemptible inhumanity exhibited by this insane and corrupt cabal of our "leaders" willing to indulge in mass slaughter just to line their pockets is beyond contemptible. I could go on - you make so many important and damning points - but I'll just say that your articulate scholarship and courageous, revealing journalistic efforts provide such a valuable understanding of the real nature of our contemporary geopolitical realities. Thank you!
Thank you Pamela, great read! The thing that struck me the most is the longevity of this pro-Israeli/Zionist movement. If nothing else, they are extremely patient. I truly hope that the proverbial “king´s got no clothes on.” gains momentum. What we have seen of the Zionists over the past year particularly, has exposed them to the eyes of the world. This will not be unseen and should not be unseen. I do believe, as MLK, Jr. once so beautifully proclaimed, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”!
I sure hope that King was right, Christopher! Yes, we need to be willing to build and sustain movements much longer than the electoral cycles. Going back to MLK, the first March on Washington was planned in 1941 coming out of the New Negro Movement, which was an arts and culture movement - of course still political, but a different pass at solving the same problem.
Wow great article! This explains so much.
Thanks, Tamara! Glad you found it informative.
Great article and analysis- look forward to hearing practical ways to change the status quo in your follow up article.
Thanks, Irshaad!
Quite the post. Although, i’m not gonna hammer at that wall. I plan on bulldozing it!
Oooh! Much better!
Excellent work thank you Pamela. The situation here in Australia bears a remarkable similarity.
Thanks for making this point. This problem extends well beyond the US.
Thank you for this thorough exposé of AIPAC and its many tentacles. It seems to me that the US must have been a very willing partner of the Israel lobby all through the last 70 years or none of this would have been possible. The US MIC-led power structure sees Israel as crucial to the US's "national interests", so it wouldn't surprise me if it were directly behind AIPAC gaining so much influence. AIPAC may in essence provide plausible deniability for the real power interests in the US to get what they want.
Yeh, Bob... 100%. I would need to go a few levels deeper to really understand how their internal thinking developed. When you form a new nation and you think through what is needed to make the people you form it on top of invisible...when your movement (Zionism) has already been in motion for 100 years prior in an active sense and when the ideas behind it have been part of the ether for maybe another 1000 years or more (Christian Zionism)... I suspect it may be easier to see decades into the future and simply take one step at a time as it makes most sense. And this is important to incorporate and perhaps it's absent from my article - that Zionism as a movement and as a reason for Israel in and of itself was growing alongside AIPAC. It was growing amongst the Christians who are the biggest donors, and it was growing in response to Palestinian resistance and the reality of developing the mindset in a people that justified the unthinkable endgame.