Reporter’s Notebook: 
AIPAC’s 2020 Conference Tilts into Partisanship

BENJAMIN FREED CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Eretz

WASHINGTON — One of the most famil-
iar refrains heard while walking around the 
American Israel Public Affairs Committee’
s 
annual policy conference is that the group 
is bipartisan; that the relationship between 
the United States and Israel is something 
that bridges political factions.
But whether because the conference, 
held March 1-3, occurred during pivotal 
elections in both countries — the Super 
Tuesday primaries for the U.S., the third 
Knesset contest in less than a year for Israel 

— or because a sitting Republican admin-
istration has been courting AIPAC aggres-
sively, naked partisanship was never far 
from the surface over the three-day event.
The first day’
s speakers made clear a vast 
majority of AIPAC’
s attendees didn’
t think 
too highly of Bernie Sanders. The Israeli 
ambassador to the United Nations, Danny 
Danon, opened the conference by dismiss-
ing the Vermont senator and Democratic 
presidential candidate as an “ignorant fool,
” 
and even a panel of self-styled “progressive” 
U.S. activists distanced themselves from 
Sanders. 
On Monday, former New York Mayor 
Michael Bloomberg, then still in the race 

for the Democratic nomination, and 
Vice President Mike Pence also laid into 
Sanders. But things took a darker turn that 
evening when David Friedman, the U.S. 
ambassador to Israel, took the stage.
“To my friends on the left: Hating 
Donald Trump is not an Israel policy,
” 
Friedman said. “Had President Obama — 
with whom I had profound disagreements 
— had he moved our embassy to Jerusalem, 
had he recognized Israeli sovereignty over 
the Golan Heights, had he restored tough 
sanctions on Iran and authored President 
Trump’
s vision for peace, I would have been 
the first to applaud, and I’
d still be applaud-
ing today.
”

36 | MARCH 12 • 2020 

Does Pluralism Have a Future at AIPAC?

BEN FREED CONTRIBUTING WRITER
A

s a rabbinical student, 
I had plenty of reasons 
to consider not going 
to this year’
s AIPAC Policy 
Conference in Washington, 
D.C. The conference’
s large 
plenary sessions have a habit of 
making me uncomfortable — 
and that’
s before you account 
for the fact that this year’
s con-
ference, which was held March 
1-3, would occur during both 
an Israeli election and Super 
Tuesday. 
Weeks ago, the dueling 

hashtags #SkipAIPAC and 
#AIPACProud started hurling 
around the Twitterverse. And 
the acrimony only intensified 
over the past two weeks as 
multiple Democratic candidates 
announced their intentions 
to not address the gathering. 
Despite the best efforts of 
some, Israel was starting to feel 
like a partisan issue. Add in 
the increasing concerns over 
the coronavirus outbreak and 
gathering with 18,000 people 
in a convention center to talk 

about Israel, and attending the 
conference started to seem like 
a pretty bad idea.

So why was I there with my 
extra hand sanitizer? Well, 
for one thing, this conference 
is fun. While the conference 
is certainly about policy, it 
would be more accurately 
described as a confusing 
cross between an Israel expo, 
a family reunion, a pep rally, 
a summer camp reunion, a 
three-day political stump 
speech, a fraternity/sorority 
reunion and a synagogue 
kiddish.
But perhaps more than the 

AIPAC President Howard Kohr

AIPAC 

Editor’
s note: In what is surely a first for 
journalism, two different contributors with 
the same name attended the same event 
for the same publication. Benjamin Freed 
(top) is a Washington, D.C. 
-based policy 
journalist who covered this year’
s AIPAC 
conference for the Jewish News as a mem-
ber of the press. Ben Freed (bottom) is a 
Michigan-based rabbinical student and 
former journalist who attended AIPAC 
as a participant and wrote a first-person 
perspective for us. We hope you enjoy the 
coverage provided by both Ben Freeds.

AIPAC

