Right-wing ethnic lobbies have taken a total beating this cycle. In South Florida, all three right-wing Republicans who based their politics on a hardline against Castro are being challenged for the first time by Democrats who have changed the subject to the economy. Al Wynn got crunched by progressive Donna Edwards, and many entrenched corporate CBC members got primary challengers. But the biggest loser of the cycle is AIPAC and its orbit of right-wing allies (like Abe Foxman's Anti-Defamation League). These groups largely supported Bush in 2004 and Lieberman in 2006, using charges of antisemitism against the progressive organizations like Moveon and the blogs. This fierce conservative offensive was finally stopped in intellectual circles by the acknowledgement of a powerful and reactionary existence of an 'Israel lobby', whose interests in starting another conflict with Iran ran directly counter to the interests of most Jews.
A counter-organization, J Street, emerged, and it looks like 37 of their candidates are going to be sitting in Congress next year. Right-wing older Jews went after Obama with a vengeance, both in the primary and the general, and used every trick in the book, going so far as to argue that Obama would somehow bring forth another holocaust. Other organizations, like JewsVote, used celebrities like Sarah Silverman to reach out to younger Jews, and none of the standard propagandizing from McCain worked. Finally, the mystique of AIPAC as an unstoppable force has been punctured.
AIPAC has responded, feebly and secretively. Former Executive Director of AIPAC Morrie Amitay, the founder of the powerful WashingtonPAC (which separates itself from other conservative Jewish PACs by bragging of 'its Capitol Hill location enables it to meet with Representatives and Senators on an almost daily basis') attacked J Street openly as the 'blame Israel first' crowd and essentially declared war on their candidates in an off the record memo published on an extreme right-wing website. This declaration was accompanied by impotence, as most of J Street's candidates look likely to take seats next year on Capitol Hill.
Amitay's clients include "the Northrop-Grumman Corporation, TRW, the American Petroleum Institute, Pan American Airways, the Government of Turkey, Tenneco, Israel Aerospace Industries, ITT/Gilfillan, the Solar Energy Industry Association, AMETEK, Inc., and BAE Systems PLC", he is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and he believes Jews who don't agree his hardline approach to Iran, Iraq, and the Middle East are the biggest threat to Israel.
"The real threat to continued strong American public and congressional support for close U.S.-Israel ties comes from anti-Israel bias in the major media, elite universities, and most importantly from ultra-liberal Jewish organizations like Americans for Peace Now and individual Jews who seem to have difficulties dealing with their own Jewishness."
In other words, Amitay is a hyper-connected DC defense contractor who makes money by electing neoconservatives and extracting legislative favors from them.
I edited this to reflect some serious errors with an earlier version of the post.
STATE BLOGS
