Should AIPAC Register as a Foreign Agent?https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/aipac-should-register-as-a-foreign-agent/Quote
Last week the Senate Judiciary Committee postponed a meeting
ostensibly convened to discuss the failure to enforce the Foreign
Agents Registration Act of 1938 (FARA). Originally rescheduled for
this week, the postponed meeting would have featured Donald
Trump Jr. and former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort
testifying about their controversial Trump Tower meeting, but their
subpoenas were canceled at the last minute after they arranged to
turn over documents. The June 2016 meeting under investigation
included Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, lobbyist Rinat
Akhmetshin, publicist Rob Goldstone, businessman Ike Kaveladze,
and translator Anatoli Samochornov. Trump son-in-law Jared
Kushner was also in attendance, apparently only briefly.
The Judiciary Committee hearing was originally set up to look at
the possible Russian links of former journalist and head of the
research firm Fusion GPS Glenn Simpson, who was behind the
infamous Trump dossier that appeared in January. Yet in reality it is
part of the broader effort to determine whether Moscow interfered
in the 2016 election on behalf of the Donald Trump campaign.
FARA was created in the lead up to World War II to help monitor
the activity of Italian, German and Japanese agent-lobbyists who
were believed to be working hard in the U.S. to influence opinion as
well as congressional votes in favor of their respective sponsoring
nations. The intention was to force the “foreign agents” to register
with the Department of the Treasury so they would have to identify
their government sponsors and be required to reveal their sources
of income.
FARA is not very rigorously enforced, which was one of the points
that the Judiciary Committee was prepared to address in regards
to Russia, but there can be consequences for those who ignore it.
Former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn was recently
compelled to register as an agent of Turkey after he received
$530,000 in payments to support Ankara’s view regarding those it
believed to be behind last year’s coup.
Ironically, the most powerful and effective foreign-government
lobby in Washington is so dominant that it has been able to avoid
registering for the past 55 years. The American Israel Public Affairs
Committee (AIPAC) was last confronted by FARA when its
predecessor organization the American Zionist Council was
pressured by John F. Kennedy’s Justice Department in 1962 and
1963. Kennedy’s death stopped that effort—and ended White
House attempts to hold Israel accountable for the development of
its secret nuclear weapons program (which depended on nuclear
material removed illegally from the United States with the
connivance of a company located in Pennsylvania called NUMEC).
AIPAC’s website declares that it is “America’s Pro-Israel Lobby,” so
by its own admission it functions pretty clearly as Israel’s proxy. It
spent $102 million in 2015, had 396 employees in 2013, and claims
to have 100,000 members, many of whom are organized into state
and city chapters. It also benefits from being a tax exempt 501(c)4
organization classified as promoting “international understanding.”
Its annual Summit in Washington attracts more than 15,000
participants, including scores of congressmen and other senior
government officials. It blankets Capitol Hill with its lobbyists and is
a prolific source of position papers explaining Israel’s perception of
what is taking place in the Middle East. Its easy access to the
media and also to politicians in Washington is so widely accepted
on Capitol Hill that it reportedly frequently drafts bills that Congress
then goes on to propose.
No Washington lobby is benign. Lobbies exist to subvert the public
interest. They promote particular agendas and are not intended to
enhance the general well-being of the American public. Lobbyists
would argue that they are in the information business, that they
make lawmakers aware of facts that impact on pending legislation,
but the reality is that every lobby is nevertheless driven by self-
interest.
The power of the Israel Lobby and of AIPAC is not cost free for the
American public. The current $3 billion plus that Israel, with a
thriving first world economy, receives in military assistance is on
top of the $130 billion that it has received since 1949. Protecting
Israel in international organizations like the United Nations has
sometimes marginalized the U.S. in such bodies and the lobby’s
influence over American foreign policy has often been noted. In
2010 General David Petraeus stated that Israeli policies were
putting American military personnel in the Middle East in danger.
He quickly recanted, however.
Once upon a time AIPAC’s Steven Rosen boasted to an
interviewer, “You see this napkin? In twenty-four hours, we could
have the signatures of seventy senators on this napkin.” He meant
that congressmen would sign on to anything if they thought it would
please Israel. Recently the U.S. Congress has been working on
bills that would criminalize individuals or groups that support a
boycott of Israel. It would not be the first such legislation. The 2015
mnibus trade agreement with Europe included an amendment
mandating that nations engaging in anti-Israel boycotts, to include
“Israeli controlled territories,” should be subject to retaliatory action
by the U.S.
There are currently two bills constituting the Israel Anti-Boycott Act
of 2017 (S.720 and H.R. 1697) being considered by the Senate and
House that outdo any previous deference to Israeli interests. The
Senate bill was introduced by Senator Ben Cardin, who also had a
hand in the trade-legislation amendments protecting Israel.
According to the Jewish Telegraph Agency, the bill was drafted with
the assistance of AIPAC. The legislation, which would almost
certainly be overturned as unconstitutional if it ever does in fact
become law, is particularly dangerous, and goes well beyond any
previous pro-Israeli legislation, essentially denying free speech
when the subject is Israel.
The two versions of the bill that are moving through Congress have
238 sponsors and cosponsors in the House and 46 in the Senate. If
you do your math, you will realize that those numbers already
constitute a majority in the House and are only five short of one in
the Senate, so passage of the bills is virtually assured. The bill’s
sponsors include many congressmen who have in the past
frequently spoken out in defense of free speech, with Senator Ted
Cruz having said in 2014, for example, that “The First Amendment
was enacted to protect unreasonable speech. I, for one, certainly
don’t want our speech limited to speech that elected politicians in
Washington think is reasonable.”
The movement that is particularly targeted by the bills is referred to
as BDS, or Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions. It is a non-violent
reaction to the Israeli military occupation of Palestinian land on the
West Bank and the continued building of Jewish-only settlements.
BDS has been targeted both by the Israeli government and by
AIPAC. The AIPAC website, which describes the group’s lobbying
agenda, includes the promotion of the Israel Anti-Boycott Act as a
top priority.
The Israeli government and its American supporters particularly
fear BDS because it has become quite popular, particularly on
university campuses, where administrative steps have frequently
been taken to suppress it. The denial of free speech on campus
when it relates to Israel has sometimes been referred to as the
“Palestinian exception.” Nevertheless, the message continues to
resonate, due both to its non-violence its and human rights appeal.
It challenges Israel’s arbitrary military rule over 3 million
Palestinians on the West Bank who have onerous restrictions
placed on nearly every aspect of their daily lives. And its underlying
message is that Israel is a rogue state engaging in actions that are
widely considered to be both illegal and immoral, which the Israeli
government rightly sees as potentially delegitimizing.
Twenty-one state legislatures have already passed various laws
confronting BDS, in many cases initiating economic penalties on
organizations that boycott Israel or denying state funds to colleges
and universities that allow BDS advocates to operate freely on
campus. The pending federal legislation would go one step further
by criminalizing any U.S. citizen “engaged in interstate or foreign
commerce” who supports a boycott of Israel or who even goes
about “requesting the furnishing of information” regarding it, with
penalties enforced through amendments of two existing laws, the
Export Administration Act of 1979 and the Export-Import Act of
1945, that include potential fines of between $250,000 and $1
million and up to 20 years in prison.
Interestingly, a number of churches, to include the Presbyterians,
Mennonites, and United Church of Christ, have divested from
companies participating in the occupation of the West Bank and
could be subject to the punitive steps authorized by the legislation.
And it also is interesting to note that the bills would not punish
anyone who does not have a business relationship with Israel for
reasons other than politics. The punishment comes solely when
one states that he or she is not engaging in business with Israel
due to objections regarding what Israel is doing to the Palestinians.
Daniel Larison has observed that even if one assumes that the
legislation will face judicial hurdles and will never be enacted, it is
nevertheless discouraging to consider that a clear majority of
congressmen thinks it is perfectly acceptable to deny all Americans
the right to free political expression in order to defend an
internationally-acknowledged illegal occupation being carried out by
a foreign country. That the occupation is illegal has even been
acknowledged repeatedly by Washington, which contradicts its own
policy with this legislation.
Those co-sponsoring the bills include Democrats, Republicans,
progressives, and conservatives. Deference to Israeli interests is
bipartisan and crosses ideological lines. Glenn Greenwald and
Ryan Grim, writing at The Intercept, observe that “…the very
mention of the word ‘Israel’ causes most members of both parties
to quickly snap into line in a show of unanimity that would make the
regime of North Korea blush with envy.”
Finally, the seemingly unrelenting pressure to make criticism of
Israel illegal is particularly dangerous as it is international. Indeed, it
is a global phenomenon. Wherever one goes—Western Europe,
Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United States—there is a
well-organized and funded lobby ready, willing, and able to go to
war to protect Israel. In France it is illegal to wear a t-shirt
supporting BDS or to demonstrate in favor of it. Britain has
introduced laws that include defining criticism of Israel as anti-
Semitism. In Canada, support of BDS has been regarded as a hate
crime.
Will FARA registration of AIPAC as a foreign lobby fix all that? Of
course not, but it would be a good first step. AIPAC would have to
publicly acknowledge that it is acting on behalf of a foreign
government and its sources of income would be subject to review.
While the Congress is busy searching for Russian agents under
FARA it just might spend some time also examining the pernicious
influence of the unregistered and unrestrained Israel Lobby.
Philip Giraldi, a former CIA officer, is executive director of the Council for the National Interest.
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