I received, a couple of days ago, an email message from AIPAC, calling on me to "renew" my "gift" to this organization. I could not do that - for two reasons. First, I have never donated to AIPAC. Second, I would not do that because of the content of the message.
It refers to a historical event: "On October 6, 1943, a delegation of American rabbis arrived at the White House for a personal audience with President Franklin Roosevelt" "to present to the president irrefutable proof that the Nazis were conducting a wholesale annihilation of European Jews," and "[t]hey were denied a meeting." This is immediately followed by: "The ensuing tragedy is, of course, well known. No coordinated Allied rescue was launched. The flames consumed 6 million."
This, of course, implies a post hoc ergo propter hoc logical fallacy of causality: if only Roosevelt agreed to the meeting, there would be a "coordinated Allied rescue" and no Shoah. This also implies that Roosevelt did not know of the genocide, left uninformed by the rabbis (while some, like Stephen Wise, did have access to the president). Nowadays, however, due to AIPAC's activity, we are in luck: "Today we are not turned away at the door," while AIPAC is "the only organization who meets regularly with leaders in both parties to advance initiatives that enhance the safety and security of both nations." Apart from the fact that the latter statement is not true, it remains unclear why "despite our achievements [none listed - MV], Israel today remains far from safe." In fact, the only real current source of existential threat to Israel, nuclear Iran, is continually downplayed if not ignored by the consecutive US administrations, and the last one fundamentally differs from Israel in its approach to the problem. While Israel is against allowing Iran to reach the capacity to develop a nuke, Obama's administration is somehow going to control the fact of its construction - a feat requiring clairvoyance.
The truth is that Roosevelt did know about the genocide - he did not care enough to undertake anything about it. This is why he would not waste time on meeting with the rabbis. Similarly, the Obama administration is aware that Iran would be able to put the bomb together when it has developed capacity for that - and no amount of angry rhetoric from the US would be able to stop that. Israel would be abandoned the same way the Jews were in WW2, just as the US abandoned Kurds in the aftermath of the first Saddam war, did nothing for Tutsis when they were slaughtered by Hutus in Rwanda, could not care less about Iranians when they were dying in protests to the ayatollahs, and sacrificed its own ambassador and others in Benghazi - to the politically opportune narrative of "Al Qaeda is on its heels" serving the renewal of Obama's incompetent presidency.
It is a question why AIPAC perceives itself as the only organization regularly meeting with the US "leaders" on behalf of Israel - is it wishful thinking or a goal? Either way, it is not something to be proud of, considering that there are other organizations with older and more consistent pro-Israel record, such as the ZOA. And the "terrorist groups [will] continue to stockpile rockets aimed at Israel along her borders" because instead of putting responsibility for terror on the terrorists, Obama, unhindered by the AIPAC, puts it on Israel that dares to build housing in its own capital and resists the US calls for repeats of ethnic self-cleansing. Obama, access to whom the AIPAC's message implies, is surely aware of the impact of his anti-Israel policies and of the encouragement the Nazis' genocidal heirs - both Shi'a or Sunni - receive from his attacks on Israel's integrity, support for Muslim Brotherhood, leniency toward ayatollahs and tax persecution of pro-Israel groups.
This is why I will donate not to self-congratulating AIPAC, but to those who indeed try to protect both nations - Israel and the US, as both are threatened by terrorist Islam, state and non-state. Perhaps, if those other organizations gain greater access to the public and US "leaders" that AIPAC claims to have monopolized, the results will be better.
