Juan Cole calls for taking fight against Israel to Congress instead of to the streets
I want to follow up today on my postings over the weekend on how organizing to defend progressive congressional representatives and punish reactionary ones is far superior to street protests as political action on the Israeli-Palestinian issue.
People wrote to defend street protests or minded that I said I was annoyed. I stand by what I said. Street protests have not stopped the US Congress from turning Israel into a massive arms arsenal in the Middle East or from granting it $3 billion a year, in part for such military purposes. (Israel has received the lion's share of US foreign aid in recent decades, even though people in Rwanda need the help more and even though the Israeli per capita income in the early zeroes has been something like $17,000 a year, more than Potugal or Poland and similar to Greece.) Protests have not sto pped US complicity in the creeping Israeli colonization of the West Bank, including the area around Jerusalem. They have not stopped the 2006 or 2009 wars of their client on weak and virtually defenseless opponents such as the south Beirut tenement buildings or Gaza hospitals. ...
So I am proposing a coordinating committee that would have two purposes:
1. It would develop a large database of leaders of concerned civic organizations so as to tip them when big votes in Congress were coming. These organizations would then tip their members, who would deluge Congress with millions of emails on what is at stake. There are lots of allies in US civil society for this enterprise, including religious congregations (liberal synagogues, Presbyterians, Catholics, Quakers, Mennonites, Muslim mosques, Unitatiran Universalists, etc.). Such an effort could also mobilizer Greens, Libertarians, and Socialists, as well as sections of the Democratic and Republican Parties.
2. It would direct sympathetic PACs to donate money in close races to anti-war candidates,and to defend representatives and senators who dared buck the Israel lobbies from reprisals. It would also try to unseat hawks like Joe Lieberman and Saxby Chambliss.
This America First Public Affairs Committee could easily be organized and could quickly become very influential. All we would need to do is win a couple of rounds with AIPAC and suddenly congressional votes would be much closer.
It would also coordinate the lobbying of those existing small PACs which are more narrowly focused but which have a strong interest in the peace process--J Street, the Peace Action Politica Action Committee, the Arab American Political Action Committee, the National Iranian American Council, etc., etc....
Read entire article at Juan Cole at his blog, Informed Comment
People wrote to defend street protests or minded that I said I was annoyed. I stand by what I said. Street protests have not stopped the US Congress from turning Israel into a massive arms arsenal in the Middle East or from granting it $3 billion a year, in part for such military purposes. (Israel has received the lion's share of US foreign aid in recent decades, even though people in Rwanda need the help more and even though the Israeli per capita income in the early zeroes has been something like $17,000 a year, more than Potugal or Poland and similar to Greece.) Protests have not sto pped US complicity in the creeping Israeli colonization of the West Bank, including the area around Jerusalem. They have not stopped the 2006 or 2009 wars of their client on weak and virtually defenseless opponents such as the south Beirut tenement buildings or Gaza hospitals. ...
So I am proposing a coordinating committee that would have two purposes:
1. It would develop a large database of leaders of concerned civic organizations so as to tip them when big votes in Congress were coming. These organizations would then tip their members, who would deluge Congress with millions of emails on what is at stake. There are lots of allies in US civil society for this enterprise, including religious congregations (liberal synagogues, Presbyterians, Catholics, Quakers, Mennonites, Muslim mosques, Unitatiran Universalists, etc.). Such an effort could also mobilizer Greens, Libertarians, and Socialists, as well as sections of the Democratic and Republican Parties.
2. It would direct sympathetic PACs to donate money in close races to anti-war candidates,and to defend representatives and senators who dared buck the Israel lobbies from reprisals. It would also try to unseat hawks like Joe Lieberman and Saxby Chambliss.
This America First Public Affairs Committee could easily be organized and could quickly become very influential. All we would need to do is win a couple of rounds with AIPAC and suddenly congressional votes would be much closer.
It would also coordinate the lobbying of those existing small PACs which are more narrowly focused but which have a strong interest in the peace process--J Street, the Peace Action Politica Action Committee, the Arab American Political Action Committee, the National Iranian American Council, etc., etc....