AIPAC

[Kleine Scheiße]

You have phrased those options in such a way that you would have to be frothingly insane to choose the second option.

Regardless, AIPAC is too powerful because the way we run our legislature is based on lobbying. AIPAC is too powerful because they are lobbyists and all lobbyists are too powerful.

There is no legitimate reason to single out AIPAC for being very effective at their job. There is no legitimate reason to oppose a two-state solution. There is no legitimate reason to insist that international law does not apply to Israel. There is no legitimate reason to insist that Israel does not have the right to protect its borders.

Israel is not some magical paradise that can just up and defend itself with thoughts and prayers. Israel needs allies and we are one of those allies. That doesn't mean we can't disagree with them and disagree loudly if need be -- it is far easier and more effective to work with allies toward compromise than to make enemies of entire regions, and if nothing else, we have to work with what we have at the moment.

Obviously, Israel has no excuse for human rights violations. No nation does. That has never stopped us from working with those nations before, and to single out Israel on that charge, to pretend that so much of the rest of the world is not doing equally bad things, is an antisemitic position. Not everyone who makes that charge is doing so consciously, granted, but whether a given individual is behaving knowingly or unthinkingly is outside the scope of this present discussion. The point is, it is the wrong thing to do.

EDIT: Also, because I forgot to point this out, antisemitism is just as much a social justice issue as anything else. Anything else is patent hypocrisy. I'm glad that many Republicans are willing to call out antisemitism because it's a point where they and I agree. This is not a partisan issue -- nor should be racism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, ageism, or any other question of bigotry and social power dynamics. The fact that conservatives are more readily and reliably willing to talk about antisemitism does not mean that the elimination of antisemitism ought just be a conservative position. That is reductionist, mean-spirited, and lives hang literally in the balance of such a question.