Friday night, Anshe Emet hosted what shoulda been an interesting program on the differences between political candidates for various offices on varous issues in the coming. Affordable housing, health care, etc. It featured representatives from Lakeview Action Coalition and JCUA. Each spoke for about 15 minutes.
For some reason, the organizers tossed AIPAC into the mix. So after we heard about topics relevant to local elections, this dude stands up and spouts off about Israel for 30 minutes. Its was bombastic and completely overshadowed the discussion of important issues right here where we live; poverty, health care, affordable housing.
If you read even Jpost or Haaretz, you know whats up. I’m supportive of the Jewish state but I don’t need to be hit over the head with a two by four, especially not when we’re thinking about local elections, and that’s why people came to the event, that and dinner. In this guy made both just awful.
All politics are local and when our community leaders continually and repeated place the importance of Israel over our role as Americans, they open the door for the old canard of dual-loyalty. To say nothing of ruining a perfectly good local election forum. And I resent being told that “Voting makes you a good citizen and supporting Israel makes you a good Jew.”
Keeping Mitzvot makes me a good Jew. Caring about Acheinu Bnai Yisrael makes me a good Jew too, but so does compassion for the world I live in and my neighbors. Putting all one’s attention all the time behind the state of Israel makes one an isolated but staunch supporter of Israel without a gentile neighbor to whom its importance can be explained. It makes one a loyal but relatively ineffective supporter of Israel, someone ripe only for solicitation.
The tone of this presenter and his very inclusion in the panel was a fly in my soup, a shoe in my fruit salad. Out of place and ruining the whole affair. We ought to be able to have events that discuss our lives as American Jews without AIPAC’s heavy handed tactics. And now, back to the negative politics of the Gubanatorial campaign. VOTE GREEN!
I was at the event too and found the inclusion of AIPAC disappointing and uncessary. Brian seemed only able to cite emotional cue card responses to questions, many of whic he never really bothered to answer. That’s why I asked him to reframe his case for support within the lens of “realism” ala a response to the Measheimer/Walt paper. Seems to me that the investment in Israel dollar for dollar is far a more stabiliszing and therefore wise investment than the issue primary to this election- our costly (in terms of lives, treasure, image and power) non-strategy in Iraq.
Even if you dislike Israel, you can appreciate the stability that offestting investments in Egyot and Israel have had in the last 30 years. There’’s been no major war (a la ‘73) in the region since the US started triangulating. That was an arguement worth making, and I gave Brian the chance to make it, but instead he talked about the rearmament of Hizbollah- important, but not relevant to the discussion at hand.