Witness the Shocking Denial and Ignorance About the Occupation of Palestine by AIPAC Delegates
Interviews with several AIPAC delegates in the streets outside the conference reveals widespread ignorance by attendees of the controversial annual DC meeting.
On May 22, thousands of supporters of America's most powerful pro-Israel lobbying group, the America-Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, converged on Washington for the group's annual conference. For two days they watched Democratic and Republican congressional leaders pledge their undivided loyalty to the state of Israel, and by extension, to AIPAC's legislative agenda. Speeches by President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu highlighted the conference, with Obama attempting to clarify his statement demanding that 1967 borders be the "starting point" for negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.
I interviewed several AIPAC delegates in the streets outside the conference. While few, if any, were able to demonstrate any degree of sophistication in the understanding of the Israel-Palestine crisis, they had been briefed inside on how to respond to critics. No one I spoke to would concede that Israel occupied any part of Palestinian territory; none would concede that Israel had committed acts of indiscriminate violence or that it had transferred Palestinians by force; one interviewee could not distinguish Palestine from Pakistan. With considerable wealth and negligible knowledge -- few had spent much time inside Israel -- the delegates were easily melded by the cadre of neoconservative and Israeli "experts" appearing in AIPAC's briefing sessions.