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Friends of Israel
Key Excerpts from Article on Website of The New Yorker
Posted: September 2nd, 2014
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/09/01/friends-israel
On July 23rd, officials of the American Israel Public Affairs Committeethe powerful lobbying group known as AIPACgathered in a conference room at the Capitol for a closed meeting with a dozen Democratic senators. The agenda of the meeting, which was attended by other Jewish leaders as well, was the war in the Gaza Strip. In the century-long conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians, the previous two weeks had been particularly harrowing. In Gaza, there were scenes of utter devastation, with hundreds of Palestinian children dead from bombing and mortar fire. The Israeli government claimed that it had taken extraordinary measures to minimize civilian casualties, but the United Nations was launching an inquiry into possible war crimes. AIPAC ... endorsed a Senate resolution in support of Israels right to defend its citizens, which had seventy-nine co-sponsors and passed without a word of dissent. AIPAC is prideful about its influence. Its promotional literature points out that a reception during its annual policy conference, in Washington, will be attended by more members of Congress than almost any other event, except for a joint session of Congress or a State of the Union address. AIPAC has more than a hundred thousand members, a network of seventeen regional offices, and a vast pool of donors. The lobby does not raise funds directly. Its members do, and the amount of money they channel to political candidates is difficult to track. But everybody in Congress recognizes its influence in elections, and the effect is evident.
Note: To understand the powerful influence of the Israeli lobby on US politics, read the entire revealing article at the link above. For more on this, see concise summaries of deeply revealing government corruption news articles from reliable major media sources.
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