Who's Winning the Mideast PR War?
April 25, 2002 -- 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."
The organization also takes credit for procuring nearly $3 billion of annual U.S. aid to Israel, 75 percent of which is military aid.
According to records from the Center for Responsive Politics, AIPAC spends more than $1 million on lobbying politicians annually. CRP figures show that in 1999-2000, the top 35 pro-Israel PACs contributed $1.9 million to federal candidates, of which 59 percent went to Democrats and 41 percent went to Republicans.
Figures on Arab-American or Muslim-American campaign contributions are hard to come by, according to CRP spokesman Steven Weiss, because the extent of their contributions are relatively small.
In the years 1998-2000, for instance, the CRP lists only six Arab-American and American-Muslim PACs, of which two made total contributions of zero dollars. The highest contribution for the period — from the Arab American Leadership PAC — was $99,329.
"Lobbying is a narrow focus of our functions," says Agha Saeed, chairman of the California-based American Muslim Alliance, whose associated PAC — the American Muslim Alliance PAC — recorded a zero contribution to federal candidates in 1998-2000. "We provide civic education for the community, leadership training to educate new citizens and youth training on policy issues."
Officials from the Republican Party deny that pressure from lobbies on either side influences its members' policies on the Middle East.
"I would say that contributions from PACs and lobbies have no effect on foreign policy issues," says Kevin Sheridan, a spokesman for the Republican National Committee. "We support the position of the president, and of the foreign policy team headed by Secretary of State Colin Powell, on the Middle East."
The Democratic National Committe did not return repeated calls for comment.
But many experts maintain that power and money can indeed buy Washington. "This is the sad fact, it's the way our democracy is organized," says Tony Smith, a political scientist at Tufts University in Massachusetts and author of Foreign Attachments: The Power of Ethnic Groups in the Making of American Foreign Policy. "We have a special-interest democracy — if you're well-organized and get your message out, people care what you think. If you don't, people don't."
The ‘Silent Majority’
Pro-Israel special interest groups tend to be older and have greater access to resources than Arab-American and American Muslim groups, and some experts say pro-Israel groups enjoy an inherent advantage in the United States.
"Pro-Israeli groups benefit from the fact that Americans are more sympathetic to Israelis than Palestinians," says James Lindsay, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute. "The Jewish lobby succeeds partly because it is pushing on an open door — it advocates policies that most Americans favor. Israel is a stable, pro-Western democracy in a region where governments are often unstable and autocratic. On the other hand, pro-Palestinian groups are trying to push at a closed door."
But James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute, says there are a number of congressmen and women who "are sympathetic to the concerns of pro-Arab groups, but refuse to speak publicly." The silence, some community activists say, is because U.S. lawmakers are afraid and unwilling to buck a powerful lobby.
Within the American Jewish community, there are groups that publicly oppose the support that organizations like AIPAC provide the Israeli government.
Earlier this year, Rabbi Michael Lerner started the Tikkun Community to provide a voice for liberal Jews and non-Jews. "We decided there needs to be an alternative to AIPAC because AIPAC believes all policy in the U.S. should be in accordance with the Israeli government's, regardless of its errors," he says.
But Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, dismisses groups such as Tikkun as a "fringe of a fringe" with "no significant constituency as an organization."
Hoenlein says his umbrella organization represents groups from across the ideological spectrum, and seeks to "coordinate issues concerning the Jewish community in the national and international arena."
On the international front, Hoenlein says that while the organization does not comment on the details of Israel's military operations, it supports Israel's right to defend itself. "After the spate of bombings, the attacks by homicide bombers, the terrorist attacks, Israel has a duty to protect its citizens," he says. "There's no country in the world that would tolerate it."
And AIPAC spokesman Josh Block says his group represents "the mainstream opinion" of the Jewish community in America. "We stand in complete solidarity with Israel and with providing strong, unshakeable support of the continuing bonds between the United States and Israel."
Vote Banks or Bank Accounts
While there is no debate about the strength of the mainstream Israeli lobby in Washington, there are varying opinions about whether the lobby draws its strength from vote banks or merely bank accounts.
A 2001 study conducted by the City University of New York found that while there were 2.8 million Americans who described themselves as Jewish, there were an additional 2.4 million Americans who said they had "a Jewish background." The 2001 CUNY study estimated that Muslims account for 1.1 million adults in the United States, or 1.8 million people overall.
But in an article published in the British magazine, Prospect, U.S. scholar Michael Lind argued that the Israeli lobby in the United States "is not primarily a traditional ethnic voter machine; it is an ethnic donor machine."
While Weiss is careful not to comment on whether the Jewish lobby in the United States exerts more political influence than the community's size, he says U.S. Jewish groups base their lobbying on economic interests.
"What I can say is that pro-Israel givers, like business interests, will give to any members of Congress that will act in its interests, regardless of geography," he says.
Keeping a Low Profile
In many circles, the political play of pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian special interest groups is seen as a match between what Zogby calls "New York politics," with its large Jewish vote, and "Michigan politics," where districts such as Dearborn are home to large Arab-American populations.
But while President Bush actively courted the American Muslim vote during his 2000 campaign, many experts say cases of racial profiling after Sept. 11 and Bush's perceived pro-Israeli stand have led many American Muslims to question their endorsement of Bush.
"They rather like George Bush, but they certainly feel beleaguered by some of his policies," says Smith. "I think American Muslims are keeping a low profile these days — they just want to be treated equally after 9/11."
Experts offer a combination of reasons for the weakness of the American Muslim and Arab-American special interest groups. Lindsay notes that the diversity of the American Muslim population — which includes Arabs, South Asians, East Asians and African-Americans — makes organizing a difficult task.
According to Ibish, a number of Arab-Americans come from a world where there is widespread disappointment in politics and they find it difficult to understand the complex inner workings of the American political system.
What's more, says Ibish, "A lot of people look at the scope and scale of the opponent [the pro-Israeli lobby] and conclude it's impossible."
Suicide Bombings Add to Work Load
Thousands of miles away from the bloodshed in the Middle East, pro-Palestinian groups also face the daunting challenge of attempting to woo American hearts while hard-line Palestinian groups continue to support suicide bombings as a tactical weapon in the current intifada.
"In the long term what will determine the effectiveness of both sides will be the behavior of Palestinians and Israelis in the Middle East," says Lindsay. "So long as Hamas, the Islamic Jihad and the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade remain wedded to using violence, pro-Israeli groups will have an open door in the United States."
In the face of a mighty military opponent — where Israel's defense expenditure is 30 percent larger than the combined defense spending of Egypt, Iraq, Jordan and Syria — pro-Palestinian groups say the heart of the matter is the Israeli occupation. Or as one of the banners at the pro-Palestinian protests on Sunday put it: "It's the occupation, stupid."
But at the AIPAC conference, where the theme was "America and Israel standing together against terrorism," Barak vocalized the pro-Israeli stance. "Arafat and his aides keep repeating it's all about occupation, occupation, occupation," said Barak. "But I tell you it's all about terror, terror, terror."
Ibish dismisses what he sees as the Israeli lobby co-opting the Sept. 11 attacks.
"Everyone is doing that," he says. "The Russians are doing it in Chechnya, the Indians in Kashmir, but I think in time Americans will grow weary of these links because it's not true that an insurgent movement like the Palestinian cause is comparable to shadowy, underground organizations like al Qaeda."
And recalling the situation about 15 years ago, when many local and national candidates returned money to Arab-American businesses, Zogby says the community has come a long way — and things can only get better.
"In many ways, we're holding our own," he says. "And we're now certainly in a position where we're arguing our case."