Rep. Jim Moran (D-Va.) made a very big mistake, at least as far as the Democratic leadership in the House is concerned. He told the truth about AIPAC’s unhealthy influence on American politics:

In an interview with Tikkun, a California-based Jewish magazine, Moran said the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is “the most powerful lobby and has pushed [the Iraq] war from the beginning. I don’t think they represent the mainstream of American Jewish thinking at all, but because they are so well organized, and their members are extraordinarily powerful — most of them are quite wealthy — they have been able to exert power.” […] “The problem with addressing the groups who have argued strongly in favor of a long-term American military presence in the Middle East is that they raise arguments that are not related to the point,” Moran said. “I would like to have a reasonable, objective discussion about AIPAC’s foreign policy agenda. But it’s difficult to do that because any time you question their motives, you are accused of being anti-Semitic.”

And for that transgression, House Majority Leader, Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md) has decided Moran needs to be taken to the woodshed:

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) went after fellow Democrat Jim Moran of Virginia Tuesday, calling on him to retract his comments about the Israel lobby. “His remarks were factually inaccurate and recall an old canard that is not true, that the Jewish community controls the media and the Congress,” Hoyer said at a news conference in the Capitol.

First of all, Moran never said the Jewish community controls the media and Congress, so Hoyer is the one lying. What Moran said was that AIPAC, the ultra conservative pro-Israeli lobby which doesn’t represent the views of the majority of Jewish Americans, is the most powerful lobby in Washington which pressed for, and has continued to support, President Bush’s war with Iraq, a statement which is factually true.

Indeed, AIPAC is so powerful that it was able to force Speaker Nancy Pelosi to remove language from legislation earlier this year that would have specifically required President Bush to get authorization from Congress before attacking Iran even though the majority of Americans oppose another war in the Middle East.

To take an example from these past few months of the Israel Lobby exercising its power, liberals in the House of Representatives in the spring of 2007 sought to include in the defense-funding budget an amendment that would require specific authorization from Congress before the Administration could use the defense budget monies for a military strike at Iran. The amendment failed. Most liberals in the U.S. today oppose preventive wars in general and a military strike against Iran in particular. So who supports such a move? The answer is: the right wing government of Israel and its champion in the U.S., the Israel Lobby.

Practically no one thinks it would be a smart idea (much less legally justified) for American forces to attack Iran outside of Joe Lieberman and Dick Cheney, and AIPAC obviously. Yet Pelosi was forced to back off a simple statement that merely reflects the mandates of the Constitution because AIPAC wants to leave President Bush every opportunity to attack Iran without any hindrance by Congress.

But dare to speak the truth about AIPAC’s influence on American foreign policy as it relates to Iraq, and they will quickly send the House Majority Leader out to verbally attack you. And why are Democrats doing this on behalf of a group that is fundamentally opposed to their party on most issues? It’s simple really. They are scared to death of AIPAC, as this story by Rabbi Michael Lerner, editor of TIKKUN MAGAZINE, and a proponent of a progressive “middle path” approach to Israeli-Palestinian relations illustrates:

When Tikkun held its 2004 conference in Washington to ask Congress to support our Resolution for Middle East Peace, we brought hundreds of people from around the U.S. to speak to their elected officials. Through the intervention of one Democratic Congressperson (not Moran) I was able to meet with about eight “Members” in a private meeting in which I was told that people would only sit there if their names were guaranteed confidentiality. They had all read the story in The Washington Post that day about the Tikkun Community/NSP and its efforts to present a “Progressive Middle Path” that would be both pro-Israel and pro-Palestine, based in large part on the Geneva Accord that had recently been signed by Yossi Beilin and Yassir Abed Rabbo. Tikkun had also raised money to pay for a full-page ad in The New York Times, signed by thousands of people, calling on the U.S. to support this path. Tikkun Community members had had meetings that day with hundreds of Congresspeople, and almost all of them had said the same thing: “We agree with your perspective, but we are not going to fight the Jewish community on this topic. As long as they feel the way they do, we are not going to make this our issue.” Sitting in that room I heard a clearer articulation of what our Tikkun people were hearing in these other meetings: A pronounced fear of AIPAC and what it could do to them. At the meeting I was at, every Member of Congress tried to explain why Nancy Pelosi would never let me address the Democratic Caucus of the House (at that time, the minority caucus): House Democrats are too fearful of what AIPAC might do in response. I told these Members of Congress that I didn’t believe them; that I thought that House of Representative liberals were just pretending to be fearful of AIPAC in order to avoid a battle and stand up publicly for Tikkun’s middle path position. But then they began to tell me specific stories from their own experience of the threats they had received from the Israel Lobby people about being labeled as “anti-Israel.” They told me stories of it being impossible to convene a private meeting of Democrats who would want to challenge the Israel Lobby because when they had tried that they had found that every name of the attendees was in the hands of AIPAC lobbyists within an hour of the conclusion of that meeting and many of the attendees had been subject to immediate and intense pressure as though they had decided to abandon Israel (which they had not, nor is that what Tikkun calls for). And what they told me rang true: that AIPAC and the Israel Lobby had a large constituency of single-issue voters who would support a challenge to them in their next primaries, or possibly even in the general elections, should they not retain AIPAC’s approval. A perfectly legitimate tactic by AIPAC, but used in this instance to support very bad policies.

So much for electing Democrats to change the course. They say one thing to us, but when push comes to shove, they will follow AIPAC’s lead. Which is why we are still in Iraq, why the inauguration of a Democratic President in January, 2009 doesn’t necessarily insure a withdrawal of US forces from Iraq, and why Congress will likely stand impotently by if Bush decides to give the order to attack Iran.