Pro-Israeli Groups Target Politicians Who Call for Balance in our Foreign Policy

by Alexander Cockburn

Let's start with Cynthia McKinney, who at time of writing is fighting for political survival in a too-close-to-call Democratic primary in Georgia. Don't you think that if Arab-American groups or African-American groups targeted an incumbent white liberal, maybe Jewish, congressperson, and shipped in money by the truckload to oust the incumbent, the rafters would shake with bellows of outrage.

Yet when a torrent of money from out of state American Jewish organizations smashed Earl Hilliard, first elected black congressperson in Alabama since Reconstruction, you could have heard a mouse cough. Hilliard had made the fatal error of calling for some measure of even-handedness in the Middle East. So he was targeted by AIPAC and the others. Down he went, defeated in the Democratic primary by Artur Davis, a black lawyer who obediently sang for his supper of the topic of Israel.

At that particular moment the liberal watchdogs were barking furiously in an entirely different direction. Ed McGaa, a Green candidate, has had the effrontery to run in Minnesota for Wellstone's senate seat. Such an uproar! Howls of fury from Mark Cooper and Harold Meyerson, lashing McGaa for his presumption. Even a pompous open letter from progressive organizer Steve Cobble hassling the Minnesota Greens for endangering St Paul. Any of these guys think of writing to Artur Davis, or to Majette, telling them to back off, or to denounce them as catspaws of groups backing Sharon's terror against Palestinians? Only Cobble.

Then it was McKinney's turn. A terrific liberal black congresswoman. Like Hilliard she wasn't cowed by the Israel right-or-wrong lobby and called for real debate on the Middle East. And she called for a real examination of the lead-up to 9/11. So the sky has fallen in on her. Torrents of American Jewish money shower her opponent, a black woman judge called Majette. Buckets of sewage are poured over McKinney's head in the Washington Post and the Atlanta Constitution.

Here's how it worked. McKinney sees what happened to Hilliard, and that American Jewish money is pumping up Majette's challenge. So she goes to Arab-American groups to try to raise money to fight back. This allows Tom Edsall to attack her in the Post as being in receipt of money from pro-terror Muslims. Lots of nasty looking Arab/Muslim names suddenly fill Edsall's stories.

Now just suppose someone started looking at names in the pro-Israel groups funding Majette who by mid-August had raised twice as much money as McKinney. Aren't they aren't supporting and helping fund terror that has US-made F-16s machine-gunning kids in Gaza? What's the game here? It's the reiteration of the same message delivered to politicians down the years, as when Senator Charles Percy went down. Put your head over the parapet on the topic of Israel and the Palestinians and we'll blow it off. Oh, and when furious blacks start denouncing the role of outside Jewish money in the onslaughts on Hilliard and McKinney, what then? There'll be intricate articles with intricate exit poll calculations promoting the conclusion that the money from the Jewish groups "wasn't a factor". Then there'll be an avalanche of hysterical columns about the ever-present menace of black anti-Semitism. Just you wait. It's a closed system.

Footnote: Organizer Steve Cobble, did the right thing, fundraising and writing pro-McKinney material for telephone campaigns to get out McKinney voters, and urging the Jacksons, father and son, to campaign for the beleaguered Congresswoman.