Who's Winning the Mideast PR War?
April 25 -- In the sumptuous ballroom of a Washington hotel, three giant screens displayed a high-definition close-up of Ehud Barak as the former Israeli prime minister acknowledged the whistles and cheers accompanying a standing ovation from the 3,000-strong gathering.
"Thank you, thank you," a beaming Barak told the audience at the plenary session of American Israeli Public Affairs Committee's annual conference on Sunday. "It warms my heart that all of you here are so active and so dedicated to the cause of Israel."
The 43rd annual conference of AIPAC — the largest pro-Israel pressure group on Capitol Hill — was no minor affair, and at every turn, delegates were reminded of the stature and influence of the 50,000-member group.
Rated among the top lobbying groups in the United States by Fortune magazine — next only to the National Rifle Association, AARP and the National Federation of Independent Business — AIPAC is widely believed to have Uncle Sam's ears and a fair influence on his pocketbook.
A day before AIPAC's three-day annual policy conference opened, tens of thousands of protesters marched toward the Capitol on a hot Saturday afternoon in an eclectic display of public discontent over the Israeli occupation, globalization and the war on terror.
Despite the diversity of issues, pro-Palestinian demonstrators dominated the protests with placards that read "Free, free Palestine." Two open wooden coffins were hauled through Washington's streets bearing young Palestinian-Americans in a symbolic protest of Israeli killings of Palestinian civilians in the Middle East conflict.
Meanwhile, in the darkened, air-conditioned interiors of the Hilton Washington & Towers, white tissues emerged from purses as many AIPAC members found themselves dabbing their eyes while an emotional video on civilian casualties wreaked by suicide bombings — in the Middle East and in the United States on Sept. 11, 2001 — played on the giant screens.
All Roads Lead to Washington
Thousands of miles away from Jerusalem, the contested capital for both Israelis and Palestinians, the Mideast battle is coalescing in Washington in a publicity campaign to capture the hearts and minds of the men and women comprising the government of the world's most powerful country.
"Washington is decisive," says Hussein Ibish, a spokesman for the Washington-based American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee.
As one of the leading spokesmen for the Palestinian cause in the United States, Ibish says the Middle East publicity war in America is being waged on uneven turf.
"There's an incredible asymmetry between pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian groups [lobbying in Washington] and people understand that one group has political power and the other doesn't," says Ibish.
A Big Divide
The Israel lobby in the United States is a loose network of individuals and organizations, of which the most significant groups are AIPAC and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, an umbrella encompassing 54 Jewish groups.
Although AIPAC does not give money as a political action committee, its supporters do. With a budget of nearly $20 million, the organization's publicity literature says AIPAC activists "through more than 2,000 meetings with members of Congress" helped pass "more than 100 pro-Israel legislative initiatives a year."
