Stephen Lendman

AIPAC is Israel’s key US lobby organization, supporting its apartheid ruthlessness, its high crimes of war and against humanity - operating illegally as an unregistered foreign agent.

Few congressional members dare confront it. Doing the right thing is a career-ender. AIPAC exerts enormous political influence to assure whatever Israel wants it gets. One rogue state supports the other.

What benefits Israel harms humanity. Sunday was day one of AIPAC’s three-day conference in Washington.

A rogue’s gallery of Zionist zealots are scheduled to speak, pledging fealty to Israel, ignoring its flagrant breaches of international law, its contempt for millions of Palestinians, other Arabs and humanity.

They include Benjamin Netanyahu, other Israeli political figures, Mike Pence, Paul Ryan, Tony Blair, Stephen Harper, Dennis Ross, neocon extremists John Bolton and William Kristol, Alan Dershowitz, Nikki Haley, Steny Hoyer, Nancy Pelosi, Kevin McCarthy, Tim Kaine, Mitch McConnell, Chuck Schumer, Robert Menendez, Ben Cardin, and many others.

On Sunday, many hundreds of Jews and other protesters formed a human chain, blocking access to AIPAC’s Washington Convention Center venue.

They chanted anti-AIPAC slogans. Signs displayed said “AIPAC: You do not represent us.” “Jews won’t be free until Palestinians are, reject AIPAC, reject occupation.” “Jews against white supremacy.” “Jewish resistance against racism.” “Reclaim, reimagine, resist.”

Anti-settlement group IfNotNow.org organized the anti-AIPAC protest. Its web site states: “We will be the generation that ends our community’s support for the occupation.”

“Today, the Jewish community is faced with a choice. Will we leave our tradition in the hands of out-of-touch leaders, or we will fight for a vibrant, liberated Jewish community that supports freedom and dignity for all Israelis and Palestinians?”

Resist AIPAC, it stresses, an organization “promot(ing) endless occupation and Islamophobia…(It does not) represent our generation of Jews.”

On Sunday, clashes erupted when the fascist Jewish Defense League tried to disrupt the protest. Activists weren’t deterred.

IfNotNow co-founder Yonah Lieberman said a “unique moral moment for the Jewish-American community” exists today.

“(W)e have a unique role to play to ensure the occupation comes to an end. We have a responsibility to resist it.”

Separately on Sunday, National Campaign to Lift the Closure of Hebron activists protested in the southern West Bank city - denouncing AIPAC on day one of its conference.

Signs and banners called for the group’s dismantlement. Hebron Defense Committee coordinator Hisham Sharabati said Sunday’s action was organized to condemn AIPAC’s support for Israel’s “colonial racist regime,” its militarized occupation, its ruthless persecution of Palestinians.

While speakers addressed AIPAC participants on Sunday, Israeli soldiers rampaged through Palestinian communities, invading homes, terrorizing families, traumatizing children, abducting at least 19 Palestinians for praying to the wrong God.

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Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

His new book as editor and contributor is titled "Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III."

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at http://www.sjlendman.blogspot.com.

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