AIPAC As AIPAC Lobby

The Walter E. Washington DC Convention Center is conveniently located between my apartment and my office so I get to see all the conventions that pass through town. As such, I can assure you that the ongoing AIPAC annual conference is a big event. Attendance seems to be far surpassing last week's American Urological Association confab, to say nothing of such minnows as the J Street conference a few months ago.

Which is just a reminder that AIPAC is a really, really, really successful organization. Gets top notch speakers from both parties at every single event, has tons of enthusiastic members, raises lots of money, has a very nice office building, etc. And it's worth keeping in mind that the strength and success of AIPAC and similar organizations isn't just a factor in America's regional policy, it's also something to which the failure of America's regional policy has directly contributed. After all, had the Oslo Accords worked out in the mid-1990s and led to the establishment of the independent Republic of Palestine and the assumption of normal diplomatic relations between Israel and the Gulf Cooperation Council states that would have been great for Israel. And it would have been great for the United States of America. And it would have been great for Palestine. And generally speaking, it would have been good for the world.

But it would have been terrible for AIPAC as such. There's no way the AIPAC 2011 annual conference would be a huge deal had the Arab-Israeli dispute been settled in 1997. Nor would it be possible for writers and editorialists with hawkish views on Israel to earn generous paydays speaking to Jewish organizations around the country. And with the (fortunate!) decline of anti-semitism as a practical issue in American life, advocacy around the Arab-Israeli conflict has also become more central to the mission of the Anti-Defamation League and other American Jewish organizations that weren't initially founded with Zionist missions. Obviously, I don't think the leadership of these organizations are insincere in their efforts. But it's still the case that objective interests end up influencing people's behavior through motivated reasoning and motivated skepticism. And the fact of the matter is that we have a fairly large and very successful network of organizations in the United States that both influence Israeli and American policy and also have strong objective interests in seeing the conflict continue. Indeed, in a weird way the more embattled and isolated Israel becomes, the better "pro-Israel" organizations do.