Out From the Shadows : AIPAC confronts its worst fear: daylight.

By Philip Weiss
"AIPAC was taking on water before its VIP-studded conference began in late March. Important supporters of Israel in the media, including Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic and David Remnick of The New Yorker, questioned whether reflexive support for Israel’s right-wing policies served the American interest, echoing the view of Gen. David Petraeus that the Palestinian problem is our problem in the battle for hearts and minds in the Middle East.

AIPAC designed its conference to defeat this understanding in Washington. Still it crept in and panicked the faithful. Alan Dershowitz and executive director Howard Kohr gave fiery speeches that sought to puncture the new conventional wisdom. It is “bigoted” to suggest that Israel is hurting the U.S. in the Middle East, Dershowitz said; the Arabs hate us because they hate freedom. With his usual precision, he bragged, “Israel’s high technology accomplishments exceed those of all of Europe and most of Asia.” Kohr, too, retailed Israel’s techno achievements, before saying that it is “specious, insidious,” and “dangerous” for anyone to make the “reductivist” argument that the “relationship between the United States and Israel rests on resolving the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.”

But a few minutes later, Hillary Clinton said that everywhere she goes in the world, leaders of foreign countries bring up the Israel/Palestine issue as one of the top three problems affecting them. So much for anti-reductivism. She said firmly that Israel must stop building settlements and honor Palestinian “aspirations” for Jerusalem. Christian ones, too, for that matter.
The American Conservative