Gregory Levey has written a scary description of this week's AIPAC conference for Salon. Here's a conference in which Bush and Cheney can do no wrong and, in fact, Cheney is greeted with huge enthusiasm.
On Monday morning, Cheney got a warm reception and forceful applause for familiar speech lines, such as his assertion that the "only option" against terrorists is to "go on the offensive. Many rank-and-file members of AIPAC seemed to be spoiling for military action against Iran -- "We have to do to them what we did to Saddam," one delegate told me -- but AIPAC's leadership remained strikingly circumspect about it...
...When Cheney first appeared on the stage on Monday morning, the crowd immediately rose to its feet and filled the room with loud applause, which continued intermittently through his predictably hawkish speech.
Competing Democratic candidates were there, too, currying favor. Hillary wins. Then there are the conservative Christians one of whose heroes, John Hagee, was in attendance.
At the annual policy conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee this week in Washington, a conservative Christian couple from eastern Tennessee told me that their son had decided to join the Israeli army. It was one of many surreal moments during the three-day gathering hosted by AIPAC, the lobbying group devoted to ensuring close U.S.-Israel ties that remains extraordinarily influential in Washington. "We just love God, and we just love Israel," the couple beamed, when I asked why they had come to the conference...
For those feeling apocalyptic about the turmoil in the Middle East, pastor John Hagee was there to greet them. Of the many prominent speakers at the conference, Hagee got one of the most enthusiastic receptions. "The sleeping giant of Christian Zionism has awoken!" Hagee proclaimed, taking the microphone at the opening dinner reception on Sunday. The electrified crowd -- most of it Jewish -- roared in support, pounding on the tables. Hagee went on to declare the United Nations a "political brothel" and asserted that Israel must never give up land. He agreed with Israeli writer Dore Gold that granting part of Jerusalem to the Palestinians would be "tantamount to turning it over to the Taliban." And, after rebuking Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, he led the crowd in a chant of "Israel lives!" urging them to "shout it from the mountaintops!" During Hagee's oratory, an AIPAC delegate sitting near me said, "I'm going to vote for him instead of McCain."
Any criticism of AIPAC sends chills down the spines of those who are hot defenders of Israel and often provokes their accusations of anti-semitism. There are few if any issues in American politics now which make me angrier. No lobby group -- oil companies, defense contractors, or AIPAC -- should have as much power as all three do. Forget about anti-semitism, just look at money and power. UDI? AIPAC? Oil services? Their influence on our foreign policy is appalling.
But AIPAC has defenders who are more than willing to kick below the belt and kick hard. Can we break through that pod-people shriek of anti-semitism and do something about the alliance of AIPAC with the American right and its pernicious influence on our relationships with the rest of the world?
More on John Hagee:
Relax! The October Armageddon will take care of everything before the November elections.
Opportunities galore! Guns! Coulter! Invasions! David Horowitz! And a t-shirt!
