The Democratic Party’s AIPAC Candidates

Eric Zuesse

[dropcap]J[/dropcap]oe Biden and Kamala Harris might as well be Israelis, though they’re both running for the Presidency of America.

Harris all smiles with Biden—there's rarely any real personal animus beween establishment phonies.

The PAC (officially a “lobbying organization”) called AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee, instead of “American Israel Political Action Committee”) represents some American Jews and Christian evangelicals — it represents the ones who place Israel’s Government above America’s Government, and who therefore lobby in the U.S. Congress for continuation of the $3.8 billion per year that America’s taxpayers, of all faiths and beliefs, must continue to pay to fund Israel’s annual purchases of weaponry from Lockheed Martin and other U.S. weapons-makers, a welfare program for America’s armaments-firms and for the billionaires who own them. And it’s welfare also for the taxpayers of Israel, who don’t have to pay that $3.8 billion per year to fund those purchases, of American weapons, to use against Palestinians, and against Syrians, and against Iranians — against Israel’s enemies, perhaps, but certainly not against America’s enemies. It’s instead for this particular enemy of America, an enemy not only because Israel is an apartheid state (which is supposed to be unAmerican), and not only because this apartheid state sucks $3.8 billion each year out of America’s taxpayers, but also because Israel is militarily an enemy of Americans — see this, for example; and also because the hostility that America’s subservience to Israel produces, throughout the Islamic world, is an even bigger loss for the American people, though America’s billionaires don’t lose anything, at all, from it — and the ones who invest in firms such as Lockheed Martin and ExxonMobil gain considerably from it. But are those  corporations America?

America’s public suffers from AIPAC, but Israel’s Jews in that supremacist-Jewish apartheid land gain greatly from it, at Palestinians’ expense. America has many Jewish and other pro-Israeli billionaires (they buy ‘our’ political winners), but no billionaires that are Palestinian or even pro-Palestinian. However, the American Christian billionaire Tom Gores, who was born in Israel and whose family moved to the U.S. “when he was still a toddler”, is sometimes listed as being an “Arab” from “Palestine”, because he’s not a Jew and because some wealthy Arabs want to call him an “Arab” from “Palestine,” and not an American Catholic who had been born in Israel. Mr. Gores is non-political, but some of his extended family are pro-Palestinian and some are pro-Israel. Seven years after Tom bought his Republican uncle’s newspaper, the San Diego Union-Tribune, it endorsed Hillary Clinton against Donald Trump.

Obviously, America’s super-rich are virtually 100% against Palestinians, and the very idea of America brokering a ‘deal’ for ‘peace’ in the Middle East is absurd, really stupid, but ‘our’ billionaires’ politicians constantly promise it. And Joe Biden and Kamala Harris especially do, just as does ‘our’ current billionaire President, Donald Trump.

Here are three recent years’ speakers-lists for AIPAC’s recent annual conferences:

http://www.policyconference. (2019)

http://www.policyconference.

http://www.policyconference.

All of those speakers are neoconservatives, and they were highly supportive of America’s 2003 invasion of Iraq, and want the same now for Iran. After all: America does Israel’s bidding. Anyone who wants more of the same is in agreement with them.

And here is what Joe Biden told them at the 2016 AIPAC conference (along with his windbag platitudes):

No matter what legitimate disagreements the Palestinian people may have with Israel, there is no excuse for killing innocents or remaining silent in the face of terrorism [he meant only killings by Palestinians and never by Israelis]. … The only way, in my view, to guarantee Israelis’ future and security [and what about Palestinians’ security?], its identity as a Jewish [but the Palestinians aren’t Jews] and Democratic [How is apartheid democratic?] state is with a two-state solution.

But given the way that Israel has been treating Palestinians recently, no Palestinian leader would survive who would meet with an Israeli leader under such one-sided conditions — it  would be perceived as surrender to tyrants. And Biden offered no reason why Palestinians should want to continue their grinding oppression by Israel’s Jewish Government — Biden doesn’t care, at all, about those people. He’s not looking for their votes. He just wants to sucker whatever Democrats he can get to vote him to become ‘their’ nominee.

And here is what Kamala Harris told AIPAC at the 2017 conference:

I believe that the only viable resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is two states for two people living side by side in peace and security. I believe that a resolution to this conflict cannot be imposed. It must be agreed upon by the parties themselves. Peace can only come through a reconciliation of differences, and that can only happen at the negotiating table. …

But negotiations are impossible if only one side has all the power. For the other side, that’s surrender, no negotiation. Kamala Harris lies in order to get Israeli money — the donations like Trump has, from billionaire agents for Israel.

Is this okay? BOTH Parties being neocon  — is that okay? Anyone who votes for Biden or Harris thinks it’s okay, or else doesn’t care.

These candidates are pitching, of course, to a lobbying organization. But it’s also PACs. Wikipedia’s article on AIPAC says: “The Washington Post described the perceived differences between AIPAC and J Street: ‘While both groups call themselves bipartisan, AIPAC has won support from an overwhelming majority of Republican Jews, while J Street is presenting itself as an alternative for Democrats who have grown uncomfortable with both Netanyahu’s policies and the conservatives’ flocking to AIPAC.’[10]” So: Biden and Harris are pitching to Republican billionaires there. Is this what Democratic Party voters find attractive? Do they know that this is the situation? Do they even care that it is?

J Street says that “a new direction in American policy will advance U.S. interests in the Middle East and promote real peace and security for Israel and the region.” Biden at the 2016 J Street Gala, on 19 April 2016, said “We are Israel’s maybe not-only friend, but only absolutely certain friend.” But it’s the Palestinians, not the Israelis, who have been abandoned. They really need friends in American politics. Could Biden credibly assert the same to them that he asserts to Israel’s lobbyists? Obviously not, but he doesn’t even care about Palestinians, because none of his donors are Palestinians, and none will be voting for him.

Anybody who cares about basic decency in a candidate should just cross both Biden and Harris off their list for consideration. The only differences they have from Trump regarding Israel are the atmospherics of their rhetoric. Clearly, if “a new direction in American policy will advance U.S. interests in the Middle East and promote real peace and security for Israel and the region,” it won’t come from any of these politicians.

This article is part of an ongoing series of dispatches by historian Eric Zuesse