Soros to fund alternative to AIPAC?
Financial Times - October 24, 2006
Soros considers backing a new lobby for Palestinian peace deal By Guy Dinmore in Washington
Israel’s summer war with Lebanon’s Hizbollah ended after 34 days, but
a fierce debate within the American Jewish community over the nature
of Israel’s relationship with the US rages on.
It is spurring on efforts to create a new and powerful voice to lobby
for peace with the Palestinians and George Soros - the billionaire
financier and philanthropist who has criticised Israel’s actions in
Lebanon - is said by friends to be considering support for a new
initiative.
The move would set up an alternative group that would lobby for a
negotiated two-state settlement.
Organisers deny that they intend to rival the American-Israel Public
Affairs Committee (Aipac), one of Washington’s most effective
lobbying groups. But with sufficient funding, the new grouping’s
outlook will be seen as a counterweight.
“The Lebanon conflict provided a sense of urgency,” said Jeremy Ben-
Ami, one of the organisers of the proposed new group, which is in the
early stages of discussion. He said the “Israel project”, as he calls
it, was “a new effort to promote the perspective in the Jewish
community that Israel’s security depends on ending this conflict
[with the Palestinian people] peacefully.”
Mr Ben-Ami, vice-president of Fenton Communications, a PR firm, and a
former advisor to President Bill Clinton, told the FT. “We deeply
care for Israel. The Lebanon conflict shows the dangers facing Israel
and its need for peace as quickly as possible.”
Other figures involved include David Elcott, director of Israel
Policy Forum; Mort Halperin, director of US advocacy at the Open
Society Institute headed by Mr Soros; Debra DeLee, president of
Americans for Peace Now; and Rabbi David Saperstein, director of the
Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism.
The debate over the US relationship with Israel was revived last
March by two political scientists - John Mearsheimer of the
University of Chicago and Stephen Walt of Harvard - whose “Israel
Lobby” paper was intended to “break the taboo” by questioning the
financial, political and moral cost of the alliance to the United
States.
Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security adviser to President Jimmy
Carter, labelled Israel’s response to Hizbollah “dogged, heavy-
handed, politically counter-productive and morally unjustifiable”.
“When we supply Israel with cluster bombs, that’s an act of
international friendship and peace. When Iran supplies Palestinians
with weapons, that means terror,” Mr Brzezinski told the New America
Foundation think-tank, describing US politicians as “intimidated by
Aipac”.
“President Bush should say ‘Either I make policy on the Middle East
or Aipac does’,” he declared.