More evidence that the only game in Washington is the Israel lobby. The Center for American Progress (CAP), a Democratic Party thinktank under steady attack from neoconservatives for being critical of Israel, has taken on a pr firm associated with Jewish organizations, including the neoconservative Jewish Council for Public Affairs, so as to maintain its street cred. Adam Kredo reports at the Free Beacon:

The Washington Free Beacon has learned that associates of the D.C.-based Rabinowitz/Dorf Communications firm, which has a reputation for managing crises inside the Jewish community, have reached out in recent days to reporters on behalf of CAP as the group struggles to respond to charges of anti-Israel bias. Rabinowitz/Dorf has represented a plethora of prominent Jewish organizations, such as the … Jewish Federations of North America and the Jewish Council for Public Affairs. However, it also does work for… J Street and the New Israel Fund, both of which have had their pro-Israel bona fides questioned by critics. The communications firm has been defending CAP after weeks of damaging reports, including a Washington Post exposé in which the Obama administration’s Jewish community liaison, Jarrod Bernstein, pointedly distanced the White House from the “troubling” situation at the organization. Their defense suggests that CAP is making a conscious effort, at least on the public relations front, to repair its reputation.

Earlier this week, Ilene Cohen made the pointed observation that in the eyes of many in the Jewish community, the New York Times is a Jewish house organ and not the paper of record. But this is the political reality of the Democratic establishment; the Israel lobby is in the saddle. Obama raised $1.2 million last June at a dinner at the home of David Cohen, the executive vice president of the company that owns NBC and MSNBC. You can be sure that many of the people who gave $10,000 came from Cohen’s network at the Jewish Federations, which he had headed– and an organization that CAP’s new p.r. firm also represented.

As for CAP’s new bedfellow, JCPA, here is the thinktank stirring up fears of Iran’s “existential” threat to Israel.

Just imagine the pressure on the journalists at CAP not to say that AIPAC is pushing war with Iran…