AIPAC Distortions

Last night AIPAC hosted an event for Washington interns in which they distorted some basic information about the situation in the Middle East. Director Howard Kohr gave a brief speech and then answered questions from the overwhelmingly pro-Israel crowd. He said repeatedly that Iran was definitely on a "quest for nuclear weapons." However, the consensus view of the 16 agencies of the US Intelligence Community in their most recent National Intelligence Estimate on the topic of Iranian nuclear weapons concluded that Iran had halted their weapons program. There has been no publicly available information to suggest this view has changed. All we have is the "gut feeling" of IAEA head Mohammed ElBaradei that Iran "would like to have" nuclear weapons. We have all seen where unproven gut feelings regarding alleged weapons programs got us in Iraq. This is all part of the Israeli whispering campaign on Iran that CNI has documented.

Kohr's distortions did not end there. He went on to say that the Arabs generally "do not seek compromise." This is in spite of the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative, which offered normalization of ties with the entire Arab League in exchange for a withdrawal by Israel to her 1967 borders. Israel made no serious move to work toward a compromise with the Arab League over this, preferring to continue her West Bank land grab. Kohr went on to state that he thought the restrictions on the sovereignty of a future Palestinian state were reasonable and realistic. He compared them to the constitutional restrictions the US imposed on Germany and Japan after those countries' aggression and defeat in WWII. Leaving aside the fact that Palestinians have never committed anything like the atrocities and aggression of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, the comparison is false: both Germany and Japan can enter into defense treaties, control their own airspace and borders, and maintain their own militaries. Netanyahu's future Palestinian "state" would be able to to nothing of the sort.