What Does AIPAC Really Want?

At the lobbying group’s annual policy conference, Judis takes their temperature on the peace process:

AIPAC doesn’t poll its attendees, so there was no way to measure directly support for Kerry’s efforts. But I heard some grumbling in the workshops that the West Bank, if allowed to become a state, would turn into Gaza. When Kerry, who spoke at the conference, and two Israeli business leaders attempted to justify the negotiations, they got at best tepid applause. The discussion of the peace process by Netanyahu and by AIPAC leaders was also extremely one-sided. They did not utter a word about settlers, outposts and the occupation, or about Naftali Bennett’s Jewish Home Party, which is opposed to a Palestinian state.

Instead, Netanyahu and the AIPAC leaders dwelled entirely on the concessions that the Palestinians would have to make. “The Palestinians must prepare their population to make the necessary compromises with Israel,” Robert A. Cohen, AIPAC’s new president, declared. Netanyahu hinted at some of those compromises. Israeli troops would have to be able to patrol the Jordan Valley for decades. And Jerusalem would remain “the eternal undivided capital of Israel and the Jewish people.” If Netanyahu and AIPAC stick to those demands, they would probably doom the negotiations.

MJ Rosenberg examines Netanyahu’s decision to spend a quarter of his speech excoriating the BDS movement:

Netanyahu is using BDS as just one more excuse to avoid making tough decisions about the occupation. And he is giving a hostile movement infinitely more credibility than it deserves. The prime minister of Israel should not be giving speeches about a fringe movement that, so far, has accomplished almost nothing — including on U.S. campuses. It’s as if Lyndon Johnson gave a speech denouncing the Trotskyists for its opposition to the Vietnam war.

All Netanyahu did was use BDS as another excuse to avoid the issue of the ugly, immoral, illegal occupation itself. So typical. Anything to avoid talking about peace.

Paul Pillar notes Bibi’s enduring obsession with vilifying Iran:

Outside of the anti-Americanism that is heard so widely and often, it is hard to think of any other leader or government so dedicated to heaping calumnies unceasingly on another nation, at least one not currently waging war on the heaper’s country. Maybe some American Cold Warriors fixated on the Evil Empire came close. Attacks on Iran occupied most of the first half of Netanyahu’s speech Tuesday to AIPAC. Haaretz accompanied a transcript of the speech with one of those graphics depicting the frequency with which particular words have been used. For the entire speech Iran was mentioned far more than any word other than Israel.