The more Israel and AIPAC are allowed to become the focus of the general election campaign, the more likely that Trump and Netanyahu win.
Every time you use the “G” word to troll proud Jews who support Israel’s right to exist, think of the how much joy it brings the president.
I wrote the following reflections after attending the AIPAC Policy Conference in 2012, when the organization was at its peak of power. I saw signs of atrophy and numerous red flags as I watched Bibi Netanyahu exult in his moment of glory at AIPAC’s center stage, having just addressed a joint session of Congress, even as he prepared to break the organization’s indespensable bipartisan narrative with his all-but-endorsement of Mitt Romney for president.
The conference was extraordinarily staged, right down to the last detail. They served Chinese food at our clergy luncheon, and my fortune cookie informed me, “You will attend AIPAC Policy Conference 2013.”
But one got the sense that that the appearance of control was a grand illusion. I’m not talking about the fact that there were mess ups with the food or some sessions went long, or Liz Cheney setting the tone by beginning the opening session with a most inflammatory attack on the president. No, I’m talking about the rumble and the roar.
Every so often I heard a rumble under our feet and a roar overhead. Most likely the rumble was the Metro and the roar just a hovering helicopter. But given the extraordinary degree of power concentrated in this hall at any given time, it gave me pause to imagine how easily all this could come crashing down.
There is nothing in the Jewish world so controlled as an AIPAC Policy Conference. But not even that is immune to a world that perplexes us and confounds us daily.
That said, for the moment, the skies are clearing and the cherry blossoms are beginning to bud. Washington looks as lovely as ever. And the US-Israel relationship has never looked better.
Here we are, fourteen years later, AIPAC’s name is mud and it has lost nearly the entire progressive Jewish community, a community writhing from one shocking act of antisemitism after another1, that could use the kind of stability that AIPAC used to offer.
For AIPAC that rumble and roar I heard back in 2012 has turned into an avalanche. It all has come crashing down. And for Jews everywhere, we’ve lost that sense of stability and unity that we used to feel in what was once our “town square,” the AIPAC conference, which used to fill Washington’s biggest convention spaces with up to 15,000 people.
And so now we writhe. How could we not, when in Brooklyn, Rep. Dan Goldman, a decent and good man, was essentially equated to Adolf Eichmann, as one who “drinks” genocide:
This Brooklyn situation warrants more discussion. It’s bad enough to refuse to serve people because of how they identify - seems like progressives used to oppose that when people refused to sell wedding cakes to LGBTQs in Colorado. But calling a cup of coffee “genocide juice” is particularly offensive. Such vicious trolling is downright Trumpian, using the most hurtful language to “own the Yids,” while at the same time trivializing the concept of genocide - and therefore the Holocaust, from which the term “genocide” emerged - in order to score cheap propaganda points.
As journalist Hen Mazzig has written, “Hamas’s campaign to call everything a genocide is not about helping Palestinians. It is about stripping the name of the crime invented to describe the Nazi Holocaust of all meaning.”
You can use terms like “war crime” and “ethnic cleansing” to characterize Israel’s actions in Gaza and the West Bank and there’s room for serious conversation, with or without the logical “whataboutist” retorts involving China, Russia, and other perpetrators of atrocities, including Hamas itself.
But the minute you throw “genocide” around, when the accusation, debatable at best, is most certainly designed to enflame rather than engage, you have made it less likely for change to happen in Israel and the US this year. It’s not going to happen when you are determined to divide and exclude rather than unite those who are exhausting themselves to bring about positive change in both countries.
And a change in leadership needs to happen. Here in the US, that means Democrats must win control of both houses of Congress, and to do that, the most divisive issues must be set aside. In Israel, it means a centrist, rational government must replace the right wing, messianic leadership of Prime Minister Netanyahu and his ministers.
While the offending social media post was taken down, the coffee shop’s divisive act led to protests on Wednesday, covered, naturally, by an all-too-eager NY Post:
And of course the D.O.J. is getting involved now, because, well, Trump - who took time away from his Reflecting Pool ruminating to call Chuck Schumer “a Palestinian.” He is salivating at the chance to peel Jews away from the Democrats.
Is this really what you want, Poetica Coffee Shop? Is this why you chose to lash out at a congressman who had just come in because his daughter needed the bathroom, and he purchased a coffee as a thank-you for that?
A little wisdom might help right now, and that means a little less casual throwing around of the “G” word.
I might be interested in some of the Democratic Socialist agenda, and could support some of their candidates, if only Brad Lander and his cronies would keep their eyes on the immediate goal, which should include improving the lives of Palestinians, I agree. But that will never happen if the way you go about it is to troll your natural allies, progressive Jews who support the Jewish state. If you help us to change Israel and American leadership this year, Palestinian and Israeli lives will improve in any number of ways. And so will the lives of Americans.
But if you troll us and deny us coffee in Brooklyn, what is that going to get you? It will just give the administration a chance to divide us and the president a chance to gift Chuck Schumer a kaffiyeh. Every time you use the “G” word to troll proud Jews who support Israel’s right to exist, think of the how much joy it brings the president - and how much grief it brings to that 90-year-old Auschwitz survivor on the Upper West Side.
I heard the rumble and the roar at AIPAC a decade ago and could sense that their moment of power was beginning to ebb, as the arrogance of its leaders and their awe of the smooth-talking Prime Minister blinded them to the dangers. Netanyahu drove AIPAC toward this ruin by bringing a wrecking ball to bipartisanship. Even as most of Congress still marched to AIPAC’s beat, I could sense a growing resentment, a desire to break free, fueled by a nagging impression that “the Jews” had amassed too much power and need to be knocked down to size.
And now the trickle of candidates leaving AIPAC’s orbit has become a jailbreak, with few sticking around to see how the movie ends. The once prized AIPAC endorsement has become, at least for Democrats, a mark of Cain, and they’re the only party that defends democracy - and AIPAC should be endorsing ONLY candidates who support democracy. Because only a democratic America will keep Israel truly secure, sharing values of freedom, truth and accountability to the rule of law.
AIPAC is becoming as irrelevant as the once-mighty NRA. They’ve got a ton of money still, primarily from the right, but a fraction of the relevance it used to have, and now it is making only the wrong kind of news. Yet rather than changing strategy to meet this emergency, it keeps rearranging chairs on deck. It has yet to understand that a nuclear Iran is not the only existential threat Israel faces. An illiberal, corrupt, dark-money driven America and messianic, annexationist Israeli government are as well.
But now is not the time to pile on, to demonize, to call AIPAC a “monster.” Mayor Mamdani, perhaps you are not aware that Jews have often been depicted as monsters, subhuman, malicious and satanic. So using that word is really not a good look. FYI, I also object when Netanyahu and his ministers call Arabs animals and when Trump calls immigrants vermin. None of this is good. Stick to humanity.
And it bears mentioning that AIPAC has served a noble purpose, like Israel itself. Both have brought our country and our world immeasurable good. What we’re seeing now is what happens when bad leaders happen to good people. It’s time to give Israel and America the good leaders we and they deserve.
I’ll sum up this rant in one brief line:
The more Israel and AIPAC are allowed to become the focus of the general election campaign, the more likely that Trump and Netanyahu win.
If you consider yourself to be part of the resistance, resist THAT. Resist the urge to throw Israel into the middle of this American election campaign. Just say no. And lay off the Holocaust and the use of its most sacred terminology.
Keep reminding yourself: “It’s the economy, stupid!”
If you want Trump and Bibi to win, by all means keep on shouting “Genocide!” in crowded theaters and keep on sowing division in Michigan and Pennsylvania and Georgia and Maine. Keep on convincing American Jews that Democrats really do hate us unless we promise to give up on our people’s eternal dream. Throw the “disavow Israel” litmus test at us. Make us sit at the back of the protest bus.
And keep on denying proud Jews lattes in Brooklyn.
At least presumably they had the decency to give Goldman’s seven-year-old daughter the key to the john.
Here are some examples from this week’s news:
In Australia, nurses conspired to “kill Israeli patients.”
In Montreal, the shooting murder of a Jewish local.
In Texas, the State Board of Education is preparing to vote next week to require Texas schoolchildren to read dozens of Bible passages “from a Christian perspective,” as part of a new curriculum incorporating 200 passages for grades K-12. Fourth graders, for example will encounter Luke 14:7-11. Six-year-olds will learn “Daniel and the Lion’s Den,” from materials supplied by the Christian Broadcasting Company.
Did I mention that this is for public schools?
Thank you for this post. This is such a nuanced issue and it's so discouraging that people are looking at it in black and white and then treating people because of that.
Thank you all for your comments. It is not only a nuanced topic, but it requires a deep understanding of a long and complicated history with many competing narratives. All the narratives contain unspeakable suffering. Everyone has been a victim here.
A country does not have the right to exterminate an entire population
Lobbyists and too much money in politics are destroying us. The smart and honest voices get drowned out. Another decent, competent, eminently qualified man, Tom Malinowski, was also targeted by AIPAC. Such a loss.
People need to realize that the problem is not religion. The problem is corrupt politicians! The far-right politicians in all countries, in particular. Nationalistic, eugenics, hateful of anyone who does not believe and pray the way they do, greedy, and only want money and power. Anyone in the US calling Israel the G word is a hypocrite! I have native American roots, need I say more!
Thank you for your measured, reasoning voice helping to promote understanding. I am so tired of unthinking shouting on all sides. And I don’t imagine I am the only one!