[Marxism] AIPAC targets campuses

[Louis Proyect]

Go to http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/05/05/aipac for embedded links

Where's the SGA President? AIPAC
May 5, 2009

WASHINGTON -- The theme of this year’s American Israel Public Affairs 
Committee (AIPAC) Policy Conference is “relationships matter” -- the 
significance of which should not be lost on the 193 student government 
presidents the lobbying group brought here for the occasion, as Jonathan 
Kessler, AIPAC’s leadership development director, told them Saturday. 
“Every conversation, every relationship starts somewhere.”

Including the relationship with AIPAC, of course. In the wake of the war 
in Gaza this winter came a surge in pro-Palestinian or anti-Israel 
activism on campuses, but AIPAC, which calls itself “America’s 
Pro-Israel Lobby,” has in recent years attempted to broaden its own base 
of support on campus, to incorporate not only the passionate pro-Israel 
advocates but "mainstream student leaders," as well. The organization 
has been paying the way for student government association presidents to 
come to its conference for several years now, and this year had its 
largest group attend, despite the conflict with final exams on many 
campuses.

“AIPAC is committed to maintaining and strengthening the U.S.-Israel 
relationship and we don’t take the future for granted,” Kessler said in 
an interview. “For 30 years we’ve looked to identify and engage and 
educate the next generation of American policy makers.”

"You can really start something by just reaching key people," said Jason 
Lifton, who's newly elected to the student government at George 
Washington University. "I think it's important that you reach the 
biggest mouths on campus."

Lifton has also been involved with pro-Israel advocacy more generally, 
but for many if not most of the student government presidents gathered 
this week by AIPAC, that’s not been the case. While AIPAC didn't ask the 
students about their faith traditions, the sense, Kessler said, is that 
the vast majority of student government officers in attendance are not 
Jewish. Among those institutions well-represented are historically black 
colleges and universities and Christian colleges.

“They want to do this because the student body presidents are 
influential on their campus and in the community,” said Leigha Caron, 
the outgoing student government president at Dallas Baptist University. 
“This allows them to bring some of the influential people and educate 
them about what AIPAC is and what they stand for. Because most of us 
would never know what AIPAC is unless we had this opportunity to attend.”

"To really understand what the issues are is something I would never 
have experienced had it not been for this," said John Graves, the 
Student Senate President at St. Catharine College, in Kentucky. "It's 
more than just a free trip to D.C."

Of course, the broker of knowledge here is not an especially unbiased 
one, and AIPAC as an organization has been subject to increasing 
scrutiny in recent years, including within the Jewish community -- in 
part because of all the power it has accrued. “Inside the Beltway the 
lobby has been wildly successful at keeping policy makers and prominent 
individuals from criticizing Israeli policy. But academia is one place 
where they’ve had a lot of trouble,” said John J. Mearsheimer, a 
professor of political science at the University of Chicago and author 
of The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), 
a controversial 2007 book critical of the extent of the Israel lobby’s 
influence.

“The specific game, of course, is to co-opt these individuals early in 
their life so they are exceedingly pro-Israel over time and very 
reluctant to criticize Israel or the special relationship,” Mearsheimer 
said.

"That's the goal: to 'educate' them. Please put the word 'educate' in 
quotes. The name of the game here is to 'educate' these important 
student leaders to understand Israel's position on the various 
controversial issues of the Middle East."

J Street, a one-year-old player in the pro-Israel lobbying world that’s 
been depicted in the New York Times as the “un-AIPAC,” last month 
announced its own outreach to college students. J Street (which calls 
itself “pro-Israel, pro-peace”) is folding the campus-based Union of 
Progressive Zionists under its umbrella. Organizers largely declined to 
contrast their student outreach strategy with that of AIPAC's but said 
they're filling a niche that other pro-Israel advocacy organizations on 
campus (and there are many -- not just AIPAC) haven't.

“What we’ve seen a lot on campus is the very far right and the very far 
left. ... Israel can do no wrong and Israel can do no right,” said 
Tamara Shapiro, director of the Union of Progressive Zionists. “We are 
offering a space to provide a different perspective on what it means to 
be pro-Israel. There isn’t really a space on campus to talk about 
pushing for effective Middle East diplomacy, there isn’t really a space 
to talk about how to approach Israel when you have concerns with some of 
Israel’s policies.”

Kessler, of AIPAC, described the policy conference in big-tent terms, 
featuring high-profile Democrats and Republicans and offering an 
intensive, three-day graduate curriculum of sorts on Middle Eastern 
policy, with “a full array of speakers representing a full array of 
opinions. ... If anything, I’m exposing students to a widespread 
sentiment and not by any means a narrow or parochial sentiment,” Kessler 
said.

“It’s been really important to my education,” said Daniel McClure, a 
University of Central Oklahoma student who, as president of the 
statewide student government, recruited other student leaders from his 
state to come to this year's AIPAC conference, which ends today. “You 
can soak it up, if it’s meaningful to you, pass it on” -- as he has -- 
“if not, thanks for coming.”

— Elizabeth Redden