Is AIPAC – the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee – as powerful as critics suggest? According to this article from Algeria’s Le Quotidien d’Oran, the outcome of the recent spat between the U.S. and Israel proves that the organization has the almost unique capacity to get the world’s greatest power to undermine its own interests for those of a foreign land.
For Le Quotidien d’Oran, columnist M. Sadoune writes in part:
An “influence group.” It is with this timid euphemism, that one European news agency refers to AIPAC (the American Israel Public Affairs Committee), the all-powerful Israel lobby in Washington. While the American press doesn’t hesitate to speak of the Israel lobby, this astonishing restraint shows how the reverent fear inspired by this pressure group paralyzes the “free” press – to the point of pushing a news agency into circumlocutions that are at the very least ridiculous, in order to avoid the term “lobby,” which is quite ordinary in the United States.
After the Israeli government decided to humiliate Vice President Joe Biden, a long-standing philo-Zionist, the lobby no one names expressed itself on the subject of “tension” – not “crisis” – between Washington and Tel Aviv. In fact, AIPAC hasn’t hesitated to scold the U.S. administration, reproaching its leaders for statements made about the contempt Israel showed the vice president of the United States. In a country where simplistic patriotism appears at every turn, AIPAC feels strong enough to attack the U.S. government over its disputes with a foreign one.
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