Tsvi Bisk – AIPAC’s Betrayal of American Jewry and Israel
Despite the recent upsurge in anti-Semitic activity, we Jews have never been more secure. The two inextricably connected pillars of Jewish security are Israel and the American Constitutional Republic. Factors that effectively weaken Israel’s ability to defend itself or undermine the constitutionalist institutions of the United States are enemies of the Jewish People. Effectively is the operative word in any nuanced grand-strategy. It is a concept missing from the list that the American Israel Political Action Committee (AIPAC) endorses for the upcoming midterms, a list which includes politicians who justify the January 6 insurrection, spread the big lie of a stolen election, and equate riots by thugs with the attempt to overthrow a perfectly legal election; politicians who have seriously undermined the institutions of the American Republic; politicians who profess support for Israel while advancing the Great Replacement Theory and soliciting the support of anti-Semitic groups.
AIPAC has chosen to ignore election denial and anti-Semitic tropes in favor of hostility to BDS. Given the pathetic failure of BDS to have any effective impact on the economic or military strength of Israel, this might be the metaphysical absolute of short-termism. AIPAC’s website asserts its mission as strengthening “The U.S.-Israel relationship [in] a mutually beneficial partnership that reinforces America’s moral values and strategic interests.” Can they explain how their list of endorsed candidates “reinforces America’s moral values”? Can they explain how they are strengthening Israel by helping to weaken America’s constitutionalist foundations?
The problem is that even those most shocked by the January 6 insurrection have not yet completely internalized the full horror of the event. On January 6, 2021, the head of America’s Executive Branch, enflamed a crowd of emotionally combustible extremists and racists gathered in Washington at his behest by reiterating a big lie that would have made Goebbels envious. This deceit demonstrated contempt for the Judicial Branch, which, in over 60 court cases, had dismissed claims of massive election fraud. It also endangered the safety of patriotic citizens who had worked diligently on the election, some of whom had to go into hiding because of death threats from his followers.
He instructed this crowd to march on the Legislative Branch in order to intimidate duly elected representatives of the people from doing their constitutional duty. In other words, the head of the Executive Branch declared war on the Legislative Branch while showing contempt for the standing of the Judicial Branch – something without precedent in the entire history of the American Republic. The extremist crowd, now a mob, stormed the Capital Building, threatening to kill VP Pence and Speaker Pelosi, This event was more treacherous than Pearl Harbor or 9/11 because it came from within – from the individual whose constitutional duty (and oath) was to defend the constitutionalist soul of the country.
Imagine if Trump were a coherent thinker who knew how to take advantage of the many trained military and police personnel in the mob and the mob had penetrated the Senate, killing dozens or more representatives and senators including the Vice President and Speaker of the House. Subsequent testimony shows that such a slaughter was avoided by minutes. Furthermore, what if General Flynn – by all accounts a talented officer – had not previously been exposed as a corrupt individual with authoritarian tendencies, and had become Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff instead of General Milley? Is it inconceivable that on the heels of the above, Trump would have declared martial law and Flynn would have occupied the Capital Building with an elite corps of fighters previously indoctrinated for that purpose; consequently taking the entire Supreme Court and surviving members of the Senate and Congress into “protective custody”? None of these ‘what ifs’ actually occurred. But consider the following analogy. North Korea launches an atomic warhead missile which lands on the U.S. mainland and doesn’t explode. Wouldn’t the United States react to this botched attack with extreme prejudice? Well, Trump launched a nuclear warhead against the institutions of the United States which thankfully did not explode. This requires a robust response under the law – not the sycophants on AIPAC’s list trying to explain it away.
Some want to compare the property damage and deaths of Black Lives Matter protests to the attack on the Capitol Building. As if protests against transgenerational racial injustice (no matter how violent and senseless) are equivalent to the Executive Branch declaring war on the Legislative Branch while trampling the prerogatives of the Judicial Branch. Black Lives Matter and ANTIFA do not threaten the constitutionalist foundations of the American republic – the January 6th insurrection does.
The inability of so many to appreciate this distinction is disturbing. Jefferson wrote, “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.” The ignorance of tens of millions of American citizens, cultivated by shameless media and the moral and intellectual desert of the current political class played into this deceitful comparative numbers game. Not comprehending the significance of what really happened is more dangerous to the long-term health of the Republic than the Iranian bomb, the rise of China, or the subterfuge of Putin. If 10,000 people had died in the BLM protests, and Portland and Minneapolis had been burned to the ground, it still would not compare to the infamy of January 6th.
Some, in the name of unifying the country, want to give the issue a pass. Well the last time the United States gave a pass to treason in the name of unity it resulted in a dynamic that over the past 160 years has cost the country trillions of dollars, tens of thousands of lives and has resulted in ever greater disunity. Imagine what subsequent American history would have been if General Bedford Forrest had been executed for treason and the KKK had never come into existence. Indeed, what if General Lee and other “great southern gentlemen” had been put to death or at least imprisoned for the rest of their lives? Would the fairytale of the great “lost cause”, or the “War of Northern Aggression” come into being and sustained until this very day? Would there have been the annihilation of the Reconstruction Project by the KKK? Would Jim Crow have been institutionalized with all its attendant evils, including the mass flight of rural Blacks to Northern inner cities with all the social ills and economic costs this has entailed over the decades? Would we have even needed a civil rights movement in the 60s? Unity does not and cannot mean disregarding sedition; that will only cause more disunity and pain in the future.
Neither the BDS nor the self-righteous ineffectives of the ‘Squad’ are anywhere as dangerous to the security of the Jews and the survival of Israel as the seditious sycophants that AIPAC has endorsed. BDS is one of the greatest failures in the history of geopolitics. The same week BDS was having a self-congratulatory orgasm over their Ben and Jerry’s success, direct flights between Israel and Morocco were instituted and trade negotiations with the UAE changed gears, subsequently becoming a Free Trade deal. That same week I happened to drive past CHEVRON’s new offices in Israel. Being old enough to remember when oil giants like CHEVRON and ESSO (also establishing itself in Israel) were once major anti-Israel collaborators with the Arab boycott, I couldn’t help but smile at the impending Chunky Monkey boycott.
Since BDS was established in 2005, well over 300 major international corporations have established themselves in Israel including Microsoft, Nvidia, Amazon, Facebook and Google (Intel, Motorola, IBM and others were already well established before 2005). During BDS’s lifetime, foreign direct investment into Israel has totaled 200 billion dollars. Israel is home to Intel’s largest R&D center; its 7th and 8th Generation Intel Core processors were developed mainly in Israel. Its micro-processor foundry is one of the most advanced in the world and Intel is investing an additional 10 billion dollars to expand it. Israel is to micro-processor production what Kuwait is to petroleum production. Israel has also become a global R&D center for the self-driving car. GM, Porsche, SAIC (from China), Mercedes Benz, Volkswagen, Hyundai, Ford, the Renault Group (including Nissan and Mitsubishi), BMW, Bosch (German), DENSO (Japan), and Harman (Korea) all have a presence in Israel
If you are driving an automobile, using a computer, or surfing the internet you are using an Israeli product and have no way of boycotting it. If you are receiving medical treatment or taking medicine you are very likely using an Israeli product. Israel exports services and systems; it exports parts, or parts of parts rather than finished products. Israel does not export easily identifiable commodities that can be sourced from other suppliers. If you are using a flash drive/memory stick (invented in Kfar Saba), or WAZE (developed in Ra’anana), or Mobileye (developed in Jerusalem), you are using an Israel product. Try going through your day without using the Intel and Celeron processing chips in your computer or Motorola technology in your mobile. The Students for Justice in Palestine at the universities of Denver and Cornell used the free platform of the Israeli company Wix to build their websites. Their explanation exemplified just how silly they are and how indispensable Israel’s economic dynamism is to living a modern life in the 21st century: “Those who call us hypocritical for not adhering to a rigid logic of separation simplistically insinuate that if one believes in boycotting Israel one must do it absolutely and deprive [us] of all the innovative benefits of the ‘Start-up Nation’”. The irony of BDS citing “the innovative benefits of the ‘Start-up Nation’” is just too gorgeous for words – why should Israel hire high-priced PR consultants when BDS sells Israel’s virtues for free? One of the pillars of the Squad, Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib’ also used Wix to build her website. Seriously, are these pathetic incompetents an existential threat to Israel and the Jewish People? They are a joke, while the individuals AIPAC has endorsed represent a real danger to the Republic and, by extension, to the Jewish people and thus, by extension, to Israel.
True, BDS is a serious problem for American Jewry on college campuses with its anti-Semitic tropes hiding behind its anti-Zionism. To explain their colossal failure, they have resorted to a conspiracy theory about the insidiousness of Jewish power. The recent “map” of every Jewish organization, synagogue, school, museum, art, and literary group, in the Boston area released by supporters of the BDS is actually the beginning of a leftist version of the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion”. But the organization tasked to defend Jewry against this kind of racist stench is the Anti-Defamation League, not AIPAC. The ADL depends completely on America’s constitutional freedoms and institutions in order to fulfill its mission – the very institutions that AIPAC’s endorsees are rabidly seeking to destroy; the very institutions that enable us to defend ourselves against the anti-Jewish program of the BDS. AIPAC has endorsed a bevy of grand-strategic enemies of America’s Constitutional Republic and, by extension, of the Jewish People, and by further extension, Israel. Their short-termism has betrayed us.
Tsvi Bisk is author of The Suicide of the Jews. He has also taught American history.
