As the American Israel Political Action Committee annual policy conference winds down, the group concluded a major show of force, all against the backdrop of growing tensions between Israel and the United States and the rise of a rival lobbying shop more in line with the Obama administration.
The group’s three main legislative thrusts are ensuring a tough posture on Iran to prevent the rogue country from obtaining nuclear weapons, strengthening U.S.-Israel relations, and ensuring increased foreign assistance to Israel. The group organized over 500 visits to congressional offices and sent letters to President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to promote their agenda. Regarding funding, the group asks for $3 billion in security assistance as part of a 10-year memorandum of understanding set to expire in 2017.
Most impressively, AIPAC hosted throngs of lawmakers at its Gala dinner last night (one estimate I heard was 60 senators and 250 congressmen, although I could not verify those figures or obtain a list of attending lawmakers to the dinner). Further, the group had an incredible list of speakers throughout the conference, including Clinton, Quartet Envoy and former British PM Tony Blair, Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC), and Israeli PM Binyamin Netanyahu.
Most of the speeches included rousing reenforcement of the ongoing bond between the United States and Israel, threats to Iran, and, prior to Clinton’s visit, pleas from organizers to show respect for all speakers, regardless of whether that speaker recently issued a strongly worded rebuke to Netanyahu on housing construction in East Jerusalem.
In order to visualize the magnitude of congressional support for AIPAC at the dinner, watch minute 1:40-2:00 in this video of Graham:
Against the backdrop of this conference, AIPAC is also facing a challenge from J Street, the left wing Israel lobby. Even though J Street’s platform is more in line with the White House’s views, the group cannot compete with AIPAC in terms of congressional support or funding. The differences in the groups’ clout is apparent by merely looking at their respective conferences (see the J Street speaker list here. It included Reps. Donna Edwards (D-MD) and Bob Filner (D-CA)).
That said, AIPAC has had decades to garner clout while J Street is incredibly new and managed to secure a fairly significant role in U.S.-Israel relations in a very short amount of time.