People often wonder about the U.S.'s inability to put a leash on their troublesome friend, Israel. Ever since the Camp David peace talks, Israel has constantly reneged on promises made to the Palestinians in summits, and the U.S. has done little to dissuade them from doing otherwise. In addition, the Israeli government is unable, or unwilling, to stop the expansion of settlements outside the official borders of Israel, hampering further peace talks and creating a security problem in the area.
This bad behavior creates dissatisfaction and a twisted sort of moral high ground that allows terrorist organizations to increase the number of recruits in their ranks. This results in the deaths of not just our soldiers stationed in the Middle East, but of innocent civilians.
Supporting Israel isn't bad, but unconditional support of Israel is when all these problems begin to arise. Why is so much support thrown behind Israel, specifically right-wing Israeli policies? The answer is the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
AIPAC is a lobbying group dedicated to promoting Israeli interests to the American public as well as within the government. It does this by placing people in government and on congressional staffs. It also galvanizes the Jewish community, by both monetary and political means, into supporting those it deems "pro-Israel" while shunning those it deems "anti-Israel."
The committee definitely has the means to pressure politicians into capitulating to Israeli demands. In fact, AIPAC received funds from the Israeli government itself well into the 1960s. In addition, there have been several incidences and many allegations of espionage perpetrated by AIPAC, or with AIPAC as an intermediary, where information was passed to Israeli officials.
The problem we are faced with is a lobbying group with a substantial amount of power over our politicians.
Politicians naturally want to be elected, and in the U.S., that requires money. Our ability to limit the power of a lobbying group as powerful as AIPAC is restricted to two options. The first is campaign finance reform, where a lobbying group is restricted in how much money it can give during an election.
But this won't help here; AIPAC itself does not finance elections. It informs its constituency of who they should and should not support, exerting an indirect rather than direct power over politicians.
A second option is to flood the halls of Congress with money. Thanks to the Supreme Court's decision in the Citizens United case, companies may be able to do precisely that. Instead of a few organizations exerting control through money, the result is many companies pouring billions into their candidates, outweighing AIPAC's efforts. In my opinion, this is the better of two poor alternatives.
