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