{"id":25227,"date":"2015-04-23T06:56:52","date_gmt":"2015-04-23T14:56:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=25227"},"modified":"2015-04-23T06:56:52","modified_gmt":"2015-04-23T14:56:52","slug":"israel-junkets-pump-disinformation-into-congress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2015\/04\/23\/israel-junkets-pump-disinformation-into-congress\/","title":{"rendered":"Israel Junkets Pump Disinformation Into Congress"},"content":{"rendered":"

An American Israel Education Foundation (AIEF) briefing book<\/a> (PDF) from a December 2014 congressional staff junket to Israel may be the first piece of \u201ceducational\u201d information ever to leak out of the captive AIPAC shell organization to the public.<\/p>\n

AIEF was incorporated in 1988 to promote a more \u201cbalanced and realistic\u201d understanding of American interests in the Near East and within the general public and among policy-makers, academics and journalists. Although it promised the IRS in its application for tax-exempt status that \u201cAll research produced and published will be made available to the general public\u201d AIEF has never complied. Its relatively new, single-page website contains no information on education programs.<\/p>\n

Only on Legistorm is AIEF\u2019s main accomplishment readily apparent: sending members of Congress and their families on all-expense paid trips to Israel \u2013 over 1,000 since the year 2001<\/a>. <\/p>\n

That no AIEF briefing books are publicly available should come as no surprise to the observant. AIEF is not functionally separate from AIPAC, a lobby for the Israeli government ever since it split off from the defunct American Zionist Council<\/a> in 1962. AIEF is housed in the very same offices as AIPAC , with 66% of its board of directors drawn from AIPAC<\/a>. (PDF) On annual tax charitable returns, AIEF (which raises $45 million in yearly tax-deductible donations) claims to have no employees. It doesn\u2019t need any since according to materials accompanying the briefing book AIPAC employees like the \u201cGrassroots and Missions Director\u201d and \u201cIsrael Seminars Assistant\u201d accompany travelers to Israel.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

AIEF, like AIPAC, echoes the rhetoric of the Israeli government. Members of Congress on junkets are told by AIEF that \u201cJerusalem is Israel\u2019s largest city \u2013 not a \u2018settlement.\u2019\u201d There are no longer any final status issues to be negotiated \u2013 despite UN insistence to the contrary \u2013 because according to AIEF \u201cIsrael later incorporated the eastern half of the city and declared the unified Jerusalem to be the capital of Israel.\u201d AEIF\u2019s \u201ccase closed\u201d approach to what the rest of the world considers to be open issues probably did at least prepare junket-attendees for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s election-time declaration that there would be no Palestinian state on his watch.<\/p>\n

The AIEF briefing book is full of flattery to Congress, declaring that \u201cCongress has regularly recognized Jerusalem as Israel\u2019s capital in various resolutions and law.\u201d Yet how representative of America are such \u201cregular\u201d resolutions?<\/p>\n

A statistically significant Google Consumer Survey<\/a> question fielded by IRmep<\/a> to American adults at the end of March, 2015 stated, \u201cCongress and state legislatures pass scores of resolutions condemning Palestinians and voicing unconditional support for Israel every year.\u201d Responders could choose one of two options, \u201cThese resolutions do not represent my views\u201d or \u201cThese resolutions represent my views.\u201d The order of the response choices were randomly reversed.<\/p>\n

A whopping 68.2 percent of Americans chose, \u201cthese resolutions do not represent my views.\u201d Americans also oppose lavish U.S. aid to Israel<\/a> while the majority (64 percent) also do not take Israelis or Palestinians sides. For Israel front groups like AIPAC and AIEF, it is now becoming an open question whether coordinated campaign contributions, disinformation campaigns and free trips will be enough to fill the widening gulf between the policies enacted by Congress and the American public they claim to represent.<\/p>\n

IRmep<\/i><\/a> is a Washington, DC-based nonprofit researching US Middle East policy formulation. Select CIA and DOD lawsuit filings may be viewed at IRmep’s Center for Policy and Law Enforcement web page at: http:\/\/irmep.org\/CFL.htm<\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n

Grant F. Smith is the author of America’s Defense Line: The Justice Department’s Battle to Register the Israel Lobby as Agents of a Foreign Government<\/a><\/em>. He currently serves as director of research at the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy in Washington (IRmep), D.C. Read other articles by Grant<\/a>, or visit Grant’s website<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An American Israel Education Foundation (AIEF) briefing book (PDF) from a December 2014 congressional staff junket to Israel may be the first piece of \u201ceducational\u201d information ever to leak out of the captive AIPAC shell organization to the public. AIEF was incorporated in 1988 to promote a more \u201cbalanced and realistic\u201d understanding of American interests […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":105,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-25227","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":"AIPAC\u2019s AIEF Briefing Book Leaked"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25227","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/105"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25227"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25227\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25229,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25227\/revisions\/25229"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25227"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25227"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25227"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=25227"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}