csua.org/u/ccb -> washingtontimes.com/commentary/20050611-112050-2047r.htm
If Social Security is the third rail of American politics, Israel is the third rail of US geopolitics. For most of Israel's short life as an independent state, AIPAC (the A merican Israel Public Affairs Committee) has played the role of a politi cal action committee (PAC) defending and advocating Israeli interests in both houses of Congress. It is the single most important organization a ffecting the relationship with Israel. In the last 50 years, AIPAC has nursed through Congress scores of pro -Israel legislative initiatives, blocking at the same time pro-Arab meas ures Israel deemed dangerous to its security.
AIPAC's list of almost 100,000 members reads like a Who's Who of gene rous supporters of Israeli causes. That AIPAC never had to register as a foreign agent demonstrates Israel is an integral part of the body polit ic, a de facto 51st state of the Union. Its most successful lobbying eff ort was to convince each new Congress and the occupant of the White Hous e that Israeli interests are identical to America's fundamental interest s, ergo no need to register if you are lobbying for a safer America. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon recently concluded his 11th tete-a-tete w ith President Bush. He had flown over for AIPAC's annual conference, att ended by 5,000 activists at the Washington Hilton, where congressional a nd administration luminaries consider it a "must" to be seen on the podi um extolling eternal friendship between the two countries The convention draws more politicians than any other event, except the president's Sta te of the Union message. AIPAC Hall-of-Famer Richard N Perle's Israel-right-or-wrong speech d rew thunderous applause when he favored a military raid on Iran. Condole ezza Rice drew stony silence when she said Yasser Arafat's successor Mah moud Abbas "is committed to both freedom and security." The FBI unfortunately threw caution to the wind when it ignored this column's friendly advice last September and decided to try touching the third rail. A Pentagon official, Larry Franklin, who had worked at the US Embas sy in Tel Aviv and fell in love with Israel, was seen sharing national s ecurity documents with his pals at AIPAC over lunch at the Tivoli restau rant in Arlington. FBI surveillance tapes show Mr Franklin relaying top -secret information to Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman. But this was the kind of routine exchange that had gone on for a half-century. It was har dly another Jonathan Pollard case, the Israeli spy who carted off secret documents by the wheelbarrow-full, and is now serving a life sentence. Mr Franklin, 58, surrendered in early May at the FBI's Washington fi eld office after the government filed a criminal complaint accusing him of handing over classified national defense information to persons not e ntitled to receive it. This was the first time AIPAC officials had been tagged as unworthy t o hear high-level confidences. They had listened to, or been shown, clas sified information of interest to Israel for decades and no gumshoe ev er filed a complaint. The FBI, for reasons it has kept close to its bull etproof vest, elevated routine practice to treason. Given Washington's perennial loss of institutional memory, there is n o reason the FBI or anyone else should remember a famous case that d ramatized Israel's clout in Washington during the Carter administration. An Israeli procurement general and his US opposite number were going over a list of US military items the Israeli Defense Force needed in i ts next tranche of military assistance. The Pentagon-based general point ed out several sensitive items were proscribed by Congress and doubtless would be turned down. In a famous retort leaked to the ne wspapers, the IDF general said, "Our job is to deliver Congress and your s is to ship the goods to Israel." Mr Franklin's hot classified news seemed innocuous enough among memb ers of the same family who have no secrets from each other. He had worke d for the Defense Department since 1979 and held a "top secret" security clearance. They finally nailed him wit h documents on "axis of evil" Iran clearly of concern to both countries. Mr Franklin was one of 1,300 employees in the policy branch of the P entagon under Douglas Feith, a passionate advocate of Israel who once ad vised the right-wing Likud Party. AIPAC Executive Director Howard Kohr asked Steve Rosen and Keith Weis sman to walk the plank and the annual AIPAC conference was spared the sp arring. They both knew the FBI had incriminating evidence, though has ye t to deliver an indictment. The Rosen-Weissman legal fees have already r eached $1 million, but AIPAC ensured they wouldn't go broke. His Palm Pilot Rolodex spann ed 50 states and the rest of the world. He founded the organization's go vernment branch, which pioneered lobbying the administration the White House, the State Department and the Pentagon in addition to Congress. A national security and foreign policy specialist, Mr Rosen often called editors and reporters he felt had strayed from the hallowed reservation. He didn't take kindly to arti cles critical of the Israeli government. Anyone who is anyone among Israel's friends and admirers knows what AIPAC achieves year in and yea r out. In the next year, its new aim is to convince Congress to underwri te all Israel's expenses for incurred withdrawing from Gaza and four iso lated outposts in the northern West Bank, as well as resettling 8,000 Is raelis. The $2 billion wall-electronic-fence-razor wire-ditch is funded by a mix of grants and loans also from the US The almost $3 billion Israe l receives every year for defense will be increased accordingly. Full-page ads in the New York Times and The Washington Times, placed by the leftist Council for the National Interest Foundation, called on A IPAC to register as an agent of a foreign government. C NIF champions Hezbollah and Hamas, two organizations listed as terrorist by the State Department. It also long enjoyed the support of Abdulrahma n Alamoudi, a Muslim American who now sits in a Virginia jail cell to fa ce a 19-count indictment, including federal charges of money laundering, financial assistance to terrorist organizations and a role in an allege d Libyan plot to assassinate Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Abdullah. CNIF needs a fair amount of purging before it can expect to be taken seriously by mainstream America. Meanwhile, AIPAC's extraterritorial dis pensation will continue unperturbed. Arnaud de Borchgrave is editor at large of The Washington Times and o f United Press International.
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