You know you're Zionist when...

You can choose to adopt a different identity and later hijack it for your nationalist motives

Everybody wanted to historically kick you out of their empire for obvious reasons!

You can seek refuge in someone else homeland and then later call it yours!

You can accuse people fighting for their homeland as terrorists!

You can display your ultra-nationalism even though you're bunch of immigrants!

You pretend to be follower of Judaism yet you base your state on secular values!

Anyone who justifiably criticizes you is Antisemitic!

You can still collect considerable sympathy over holocaust even though you follow similar Nazi attitude towards Palestinians!

You can afford to have nuclear weapons while a Muslim country possessing it is a threat for humanity!

Superpowers use their veto every time to save your ass!

You're less than 0.3% of the world but you steal many of the world's capital through investment banking institutions!

You're brave enough to raid a humanitarian flotilla!

You can still prosper consistently while the rest of the world goes bankrupt!

Even though deep down you know the truth, you will still deny most of the above-mentioned facts!

Source

Guilty Until Proven Innocent

As Israeli airstikes continue to be carried out in Gaza, most people there feel trapped and abandoned by the world.

By Yasmeen El Khoudary

August 22, 2011 "Al-Jazeera" - - The mini war that Israel waged on Gaza following the turmoil in South Israel is just another perfect example of how Gaza is the Middle East's "Biggest Loser." Caught in a thorny network composed of selfish interests and different agendas, the 1.5 million people of Gaza are indeed the biggest losers when it comes to just about anything in the Middle East.
 
Our destiny does not lie within our hands. We do not have any control over even the smallest aspects of our lives. We do not enjoy the luxury of planning for tomorrow, let alone next week. We, the people of Gaza, valiantly try to go on with our daily lives as if things are in perfect order. But there are times when things are so bleak and so dark that everything we have been trying to build collapses in the blink of an eye.

On Thursday, and after a rough night full of Israeli air attacks on different locations in the Gaza Strip, we woke up to another hot Ramadan day which was interrupted by news about a shooting operation in Eilat, whereby five Israeli soldiers were killed and 36 others were injured. Immediately and without even waiting for the details of the operation to be announced, people started fretting about a likely Israeli attack on Gaza.

It was much like the instantaneous reactions of Muslims in Norway to the terrorist attacks that took Oslo by storm recently, which ignited fear in their hearts because of inevitable racist attacks that they were going to suffer had the attacker been a Muslim. More inevitable than the racist attacks was of course the media threat, which also instantaneously and without any evidence linked the terrorist attacks to Al Qaeda and to Muslim extremists. However, the murderer turned out to be a Norwegian, allowing Norwegian Muslims to heave a sigh of relief.

'We are never safe'

The scenario in Gaza was not very different. The 'operation' killed five soldiers, but nobody knows who led the operation. At first, we read reports indicating that Egypt's involvement, only to find that Israel promptly denied Egypt's intervention before Egypt itself did. Immediately afterwards, we heard Ehud Barak's statements accusing 'Gaza' of the attacks and promising to "punish those who were responsible". How he came to that conclusion, what evidence he holds, or who in Gaza he thinks is responsible, we have no idea (and neither does he, I'm starting to believe). What we know for sure is that we are doomed, and that ahead of us lies what might be a live reminder of Cast Lead, regardless of the fact that not a piece of evidence connected the people of Gaza to the Eilat operation.

That is the only difference between the case with Norwegian Muslims and us. The former were safe after the truth was revealed, but we are never safe - with or without the truth. Between Israel, Hamas, the Palestinian Authority, Egypt, the USA, and whoever happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, we, the innocent people of Gaza, can be found struggling to catch our breath from under the feet of these selfish giants whenever something happens. Today is no exception- and as usual, there's no one that can be blamed cost-free but the people of Gaza. Even if Egypt was involved in this operation, it seemed that Israel was emphasizing 'Gaza's' sole responsibility for the operation because it felt like avenging and retaliating. I would not be surprised if the communication blackout that was imposed on Gaza ten days ago was the first of many to come, and that we might be experiencing one in case a military operation is indeed launched. 

Amidst the wild rumors, leaks and speculations, the constant Israeli threats, the rising toll of people killed and injured by Israel, Friday prayers around the Strip calmed people down. In times like these, mosques play a very important role, by reading soothing prayers, make urgent announcements, etc. Last Friday, however, and as Israel was bombing Gaza, the Imam leading the prayers in the mosque next to our house was concerned with something else. He dedicated his sermon and his prayers to Somalia and asked people to donate to it. That humanity, that beating human conscience and respect for human life are the qualities that are inseparable from Palestinians, even if the world might think otherwise.

Whether what awaits us is another cruel Israeli attack where we would be both the aggressor and the victim, or whether it's going to be a deceiving live political soap opera where we sit back and watch, we do not know. We will wait for it to happen, because the selfish world decides our fate. It is because we, the people of Gaza, are guilty until proven innocent - if ever.

Yasmeen El Khoudary is a freelance writer based in Gaza, occupied Palestine. She graduated from the American University in Cairo with a BA in Political Science, and works now as a self-employed writer and researcher. She blogs at yelkhoudary.blogspot.com

Follow Yasmeen El Khoudary on Twitter:- @yelkhoudary

U.S. blocks emergency meeting on Gaza violence: Palestinian official

RAMALLAH, Aug. 21 (Xinhua) -- The United States has blocked a Palestinian demand for an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council (UNSC) to discuss the Israeli military escalation on Gaza, Palestinian official said on Sunday.

"The United States has managed to obstruct holding a meeting of the UNSC. We could not even get a UNSC presidential statement to condemn the Israeli crimes in Gaza,'' the Palestinian envoy to the UN Riyad Mansour told the Voice of Palestine Radio.

Mansour added that Washington has stressed any UNSC president statement should only condemn the Eilat attacks, in which eight Israelis were killed on Thursday.

On Saturday, an aid to the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said the president will ask for an emergency meeting of the UNSC to discuss the Israeli deadly airstrikes on the Palestinians in Gaza.

The Israeli attacks have caused the death of at least 14 Palestinians since Thursday.

The airstrikes came hours after Israel accused Palestinian militants of carrying out a well-planned operation in the Red Sea city of Eilat, north of Israel, were eight Israelis were killed.

Special Report: Palestine-Israel Conflicts

Dangerous Voyage To Site of Israeli Attack on USS Liberty

By Ann Wright

A Texas man making a dangerous voyage to the site of 1967 Israeli attack on the USS Liberty. At the site, he will be holding a memorial service honoring those killed on the USS Liberty by the Israeli military.



Larry Toenjes, 74, from Clear Lake Shores, Texas, is sailing his 39-foot sailboat, the s/v Liberty, to the coordinates of the June 8, 1967 Israeli attack on the USS Liberty that killed 34 sailors and wounded another 173. 207 were killed or wounded out of the 294 on board the USS Liberty in the 90-minute attack by strafing attack planes and torpedoes. At the site, Toenjes will be holding a memorial service honoring those killed on the USS Liberty by the Israeli military.

Toenjes is a five-year Coast Guard veteran with a PhD in economics. He worked for years in the Bureau of Budget in the state government of Illinois and, upon moving to Texas in 1983, taught at the University of Texas in Austin and was a research professor at the University of Texas.

Toenjes and Joe and Sherrie Wagner, his two-person crew also from Texas, set sail from Texas in July. They have sailed over 7,000 miles and are currently in Malta. According to Joe Meadors, the President of the USS Liberty Veterans Association, Toenjes has Egyptian government permission to travel in Egyptian territorial waters to the site of the attack.

 A Call for Congress to Listen to the Survivors of the Israeli Attack on the USS Liberty

 Toenjes said: “I do not intend to go near Gaza. All I intend to do is exercise my right as an American citizen to proceed to a point in international waters where a grave injustice was perpetrated against US sailors and express my dismay that that injustice is being extended by the failure of Congress to have the ‘courage’ to listen to what these men have to say. Members of Congress never seem to miss an opportunity to say to a service man or woman, ‘We thank you for your service!’ It seems, however, that their service is not to be acknowledged if it would have the effect of embarrassing the State of Israel and the pro-Israel Lobby here in the US.”

Meadors said Toenjes told him he is considering mooring at the coordinates of the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty for a few weeks. Toenjes will be staying well clear of the coordinates of the Israeli blockade of Gaza as published in the Israeli Notices to Mariners, but Meadors said contact with the Naval Attaché’s office in the US Embassy, Tel Aviv had not produced written assurances from the Israeli government that Toenjes will not be harassed or attacked by the Israeli military, even though Toenjes will be in Egyptian waters.

US Embassy Refuses to Send a Delegation to the Ceremony

 Meadors has been assisting Toenjes in getting the US Embassy in Tel Aviv to be concerned about the safety of Toenjes.  He said the US Embassy in Tel Aviv has been invited to attend the ceremony but that representatives have refused to send an official delegation to rendezvous with the s/v Liberty and attend the memorial service because “they cannot find a single vessel in all of Israel that is capable of making the trip.”

 Meadors added, “You know as well as we do that the last thing the US government wants to do is to send an official to attend a memorial service honoring the 34 of our shipmates who were killed in action during the attack on the USS Liberty (because of the U.S. Government cover-up of the Israeli attack). We want the Naval Attaché to convey to American Embassy officials in Israel that their refusal to attend the memorial service for Americans who were killed on the USS Liberty is unacceptable and not in keeping with the way America treats its honored dead.”

 Meadors said that he also has invited the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) to send an official representative to attend the memorial service.

Letter of Concern for Toenjes’ Safety from President of the USS Liberty Veterans

On August 10, 2011, Meadors wrote an extensive letter to Assistant Naval Attaché Lieutenant Commander Jason K. Edgington at the US Embassy in Tel Aviv, Israel giving details of the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty 44 years ago and his concern for the safety of Larry Toenjes. 



Given our history with the US Navy, the US government and the Israeli government I’m sure you will understand when I tell you that your reassurances do nothing to quell our concerns for Larry’s safety and the sanctity of the memorial service for our fallen shipmates.

If you will recall your US Navy history you will remember that our skipper, Capt. McGonagle, recognized the potential danger involved in working at the station to which we were sailing. He asked the Sixth Fleet for a destroyer escort but that request was denied because we were “a clearly identified US Navy ship.”

 Further, the Israeli government did not issue any NOTMARS to inform ships sailing in the area of any danger.

 When we were attacked, two flights of Sixth Fleet aircraft that had been launched to come to our assistance were both recalled while we were still under attack and calling for help which allowed the Israelis to continue their attack for over an hour more unhampered by the threat of Sixth Fleet intervention. To this day the US government has refused to conduct an investigation of the attack on our ship despite accounts of USS Liberty survivors telling them that we were attacked by unmarked aircraft, that our radios were jammed on both US Navy tactical and international maritime distress frequencies, that our life rafts were deliberately machine gunned in the water and that the torpedo boats slowly circled our burning and torpedoed ship while firing from close range at Liberty crewmen who ventured topside to help our wounded shipmates. More information about the attack on our ship is available at usslibertyveterans.org files/Docs.pdf.   I would like to specifically direct you to the War Crimes Report we filed with the Department of Defense (DOD). To date,   they refuse to investigate the allegations contained in that report and they refuse to send a spokesperson to USS Liberty reunions to explain their actions vis-à-vis our War Crimes Report.

 

 Move to May, 2010 and the Freedom Flotilla. 

The Israelis issued no NOTMARS closing any areas near where the Freedom Flotilla was sailing. Regardless, the Israelis intercepted the Freedom Flotilla some 60 miles from shore, attacked the Flotilla and killed 9 passengers — one an American citizen. This elicited not a single word of concern from the US government despite the fact that one of the vessels was of American registry.

 Just this year the Israelis intercepted, boarded and impounded the French ship Dignite as it participated in Freedom Flotilla 2. That was done in international waters well clear of the coordinates provided by the Israelis for their blockade of Gaza and very near to the coordinates of the attack on the USS Liberty. They did this without issuing any NOTMARS closing the area.

 That said, I am sure you will understand that your reassurances to the contrary we do not have any confidence whatsoever that Larry will be allowed to proceed to the coordinates and conduct the memorial service absent any harassment from the Israeli government. Despite his being well outside the area defined by the Israeli government as the boundaries of their blockade of Gaza and despite the s/v Liberty being a US flagged and registered vessel he will be harassed by the Israeli Navy to the extent that his vessel will be boarded and impounded by the Israeli Navy and the US government will do absolutely nothing either to prevent it or to assist Larry in getting the Liberty released from Israeli custody.

In closing, let me respectfully submit that the reason I believe the US government will not provide an official to represent them during the memorial service is not because they cannot find a single vessel in all of Israel capable of making the trip as they claim but because they know the s/v Liberty will be intercepted, boarded and impounded by the Israeli Navy (even in Egyptian waters).

Warmest regards,
Joe
Joseph L. Meadors
USS Liberty Survivor
President
USS Liberty Veterans Association


 Call US Embassies and State Department

Meadors asked that concerned citizens call the US Embassies in Tel Aviv (Israel.usembassy.gov/consular/acs/emergency) and Cairo (Egypt.usembassy.gov/consular/emergency) and the State Department in Washington, DC (travel.state.gov/travel/tips/emergencies/emergencies)with their demand that the United States protect US citizens sailing in international waters.

 Israeli Military Attacks on Vessels in International Waters

 The Israeli military’s history of attacking ships in international waters extends from 1967 to the present. In 2009, 2010 and 2011, a vessel carrying a Nobel Peace Laureate and a US Congresswoman was rammed and seriously damaged. Six ships in the 2010 Gaza flotilla were attacked with eight Turkish citizens and one American citizen executed by Israeli commandos and over 50 wounded.  A seventh ship in June, 2010 was attacked, as well as another boat in September, 2010. In April, 2011, a cargo ship came under a barrage of bullets from the IDF, but, with the help of the Egyptian navy returned into Egyptian waters. In June, 2011, one ship out of 10 in the Gaza flotilla escaped the Israeli diplomatic offensive that resulted in a Greek government ban on ships sailing from Greece to Gaza. It was forcefully boarded by the IDF and taken to the Israeli port of Ashdod.

Toenjes and Meadors will update us as the s/v Liberty sails for the site of the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty.

Source : warisacrime.org

Ann Wright is a 29 year US Army/Army Reserves veteran who retired as a Colonel and a former US diplomat who resigned in March, 2003 in opposition to the war on Iraq. She served in Nicaragua, Grenada, Somalia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Sierra Leone, Micronesia and Mongolia. In December, 2001 she was on the small team that reopened the US Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan. She is the co-author of the book “Dissent: Voices of Conscience.” (www.voicesofconscience.com). She has written frequently on rape in the military.

http://www.opednews.com/populum/print_friendly.php?p=Dangerous-Voyage-To-Site-o-by-Ann-Wright-110816-39.html&c=a

American tax dollars at work, raping children, abusing women.

The IDF (most moral army)
regularly rapes and abuses Palestinian children in order to extract information from them.

There is nothing to say except the American Taxpayers funds this abuse and pays for it with our billions sent to Israel every year. Did we not learn from what we did to the Native American Indian? These people they are beating up are indigenous peoples not some illegal immigrants that came from lands in Europe or elsewhere. Geez us!

*
It’s truly an embarrassment at best and, at worst, it speaks to our deepest complicity in the horrible Trail of Tears that continues at this moment while our main stream media keeps feeding US citizens the line sent to it by the those in the corridors of power.
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• How do we get on the wrong side of morality?


• What can we do to stop our hard earned dollars from being used to pay for oppression and abuse?


• Are we hopelessly condemned to pay and watch our moral compass be washed away without a word?

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Shame!

 

 

Congress’ Dirty [Seven] Dozen on Aipac All-Expense-Paid Israel Junket

Democratic Congressional porkers at Aipac's trough
meeting war criminal Peres. The look of treason.

Pork may be treif, but not when it’s dished out by the pro-Israel lobby.
81 members of Congress are now in Israel on an all-expense paid junket sponsored by Aipac’s nominally non-profit American-Israel Education Foundation. The value of the trip for the member and spouse is $8,000, meaning Aipac is forking over nearly $700,000 to fund this massive hasbara undertaking.

In the interest of transparency and knowing where our tax dollars are spent, I thought it would be important to list every name of every junketeer so their constituents can know that their member is on the pro-Israel gravy train.  Here are the 33 I’ve discovered so far (please add more in the thread below):

Mo Brooks R-5 AL
Eric Cantor R-7 VA
Russ Carnahan D-3 MO
Steve Chabot R-1 OH (went last month)
David Cicilline D-1 RI
Yvette Clarke D-11 NY
Mark Critz D- 12 PA
Scott DesJarlais R- 4 TN
Chuck Fleischman R-3 TN
John Garamendi D-10 CA
Kay Granger R-12 TX
Michael Grimm NY-13
Janice Hahn D-36 CA
Jaime Herrera Buetler R-3 WA
Mazie Hirono D- 2 HI
Steny Hoyer D-5 MD
Jesse Jackson Jr. D-2 IL
Patrick Meehan D-7 PA
Kevin McCarthy CA-22
Gwen Moore D-4 WI
Bill Owens D-23 NY
Steven Palazzo R-4 MS
Ed Perlmutter D-7 CO
Tom Price R-6 GA
Peter Roskam R-6 IL
Loretta Sanchez D-47 CA
David Schweikert R-5 AZ
Adam Smith D-9 WA
Steve Southerland R-2 FLA
Betty Sutton D-13 OH
Scott Tipton R-3 CO
Allen West R-22 FL
Frederica Wilson D-17 FL
Kevin Yoder R-3 KS
Kathy Castor D-11 FL
Terri Sewell D-7 AL (not confirmed)
Hank Johnson D-4 GA

A terrific website, Legistorm, tracks such junkets and offers a listing of all Congress members and staffers who’ve gone to AIEF’s trough for Israel trips.  It also lays out the specific costs of each trip.  AIEF’s $26 million annual budget gives you a good idea how much is spent each year on this lobbying boondoggle.

What I find ironic is that Congress has just spent weeks dodging one of the worst economic bullets to hit the U.S. since the 2008 financial meltdown.  And it did a piss poor job of dealing with it.  So now that they failed so miserably at doing their jobs here in Washington, they’re going to reward themselves with some much-needed sun, fun and hasbara on Tel Aviv beaches and in Israeli government conference rooms.  In their briefings, which are ostensibly “fair and balanced,” here’s who they won’t be meeting:  leaders of the J14 protest movement which is sweeping the Israeli street; Hamas, which represents approximately one-half of the Palestinian electorate; or Israeli Palestinian community leaders (or MKs).

Astonishing, that these wise and learned solons are traveling all the way to Israel to learn about the nation’s needs and how they can help keep Israel strong.  Yet they won’t have a single meeting with J14 activists.  Not to mention that the $8,000 spent on their behalf should be an embarrassment both to their constituents and those Israelis who are so desperate to maintain their middle-class status in the face of Israel’s continuing budgetary squeeze, that they’ve turned to the tent protest movement to express their increasing desperation.  But guess who isn’t likely to hear much of anything about all this?  Steny and Eric and all his good buddies.

Finally, there is the ethical and legal dimension of the junket that is deeply disturbing.  Congress members are not allowed to take such trips if sponsored by groups which employ registered lobbyists, which Aipac does.  So to get around the law, Aipac established AIEF as a 501c3 which has no lobbyists on its payroll.  In fact, AIEF has NO employees on its payroll according to its IRS 990 report.  Aipac “lends” AIEF its staff to organize these grand tours of the Israeli heartland.  Because members may accept trips from non-profits, they can do a legal end around ethics laws by lining up at the AIEF trough for a generous feeding.

So what does $700,000 buy for a lobbying group these days?  It buys tons of meaningless ‘sense of Congress’ resolutions that buttress every wild-eyed pet project and policy Aipac is peddling.  These resolutions prove nothing to anyone except that they give Aipac’s donors a sense of their own power in wielding clubs over their captive Congressional audience.  I suppose for the group these junkets are an insurance policy in case Bibi and his far right government ever really need Congress’ help in swatting away a real threat to Likud hegemony–like a UN vote for Palestinian statehood or a concerted international BDS campaign which gained traction and posed a significant financial threat to Israel.  Then Aipac could pull out all the stops to obstruct Obama (if he ever dared to do such a thing) from crossing Israel in a truly serious way.

If there was ever a thing that the Israeli-Arab conflict does NOT need it’s 80 members of Congress braying their ignorance and eternal fealty to Aipac at every turn whether during a junket or back in the halls of Congress.  Instead, they’d be far better off staying home and studying ways to raise revenue and reduce a bloated military budget in order to rein in the nation’s deficit.

Robbing Peter to Pay Israel

By Josh Ruebner

August 12, 2011 "FPIF" --  Nearly 20 percent of the constituents of Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. (D-IL) live under the poverty line, and nearly 15 percent are unemployed. Jackson’s congressional district, covering parts of the south side of Chicago and its southern suburbs, has been hit harder than many others by the crises plaguing the economy. Many of his constituents are looking at even more cutbacks in social services, higher prices for food and fuel, and ever scarcer jobs.
 
During this August congressional recess, Rep. Jackson, Jr. should be at home, meeting with constituents and proposing to them how he will help them cope with their difficult circumstances. Instead, the politician is proudly gallivanting around Israel, in one of three separate congressional delegations heading there this month on all-expense-paid junkets organized by the American Israel Education Foundation (AIEF), a so-called charitable affiliate of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the most influential of the myriad pro-Israel lobbying outfits. 

In total, 81 representatives, nearly one-fifth of the entire House, will participate in these jaunts, which, according to The Washington Post, include “a round-trip flight in business class for lawmakers and their spouses (that alone is worth about $8,000), fine hotels and meals, side trips, and transportation and guides.”

Of course, these congressional delegations are not all fun and games. Members of Congress will be expected to sing for their lavish dinners by honoring President Bush’s 2007 pledge to provide the Israeli military with $30 billion of tax-payer-funded weapons between 2009 and 2018. So far, proposed increases in military aid to Israel have been spared from the budgetary chopping block by President Obama and a compliant Congress that treats Israeli militarism as more sacrosanct than medical care for seniors. This despite the fact that Israel misuses the funds, in violation of the Arms Export Control Act, to commit human rights abuses against Palestinians living under its illegal 44-year military occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza Strip.

According to aidtoisrael.org, constituents in Illinois’ 2nd congressional district will be asked to cough up an astonishing $53 million in federal taxes as their pound of flesh for the Israeli military during this 10-year period. With this same amount of money, each year the federal government instead could give 650 low-income families housing vouchers, or retrain nearly 900 unemployed workers for green jobs, or fund early reading programs for nearly 1,600 at-risk children, or provide primary health care to more than 43,000 uninsured people in Rep. Jackson’s congressional district.

Yali Amit, an Israeli-American constituent of Rep. Jackson, Jr. called his office to oppose his participation in the trip to Israel. He was told that Rep. Jackson, Jr. wants to learn what is happening there because of his position on the appropriations subcommittee that approves military aid to Israel. Amit retorted that “you can't learn what goes on there on a paid trip of a propaganda arm of the Israeli government.”  And you certainly can’t learn about the devastating impact that these U.S. weapons have on unarmed Palestinian civilians, nearly 3,000 of whom were killed by the Israeli military over the last decade.   

The House Committee on Ethics should open an investigation to determine if it is even legal for Members of Congress to be participating in junkets organized by AIEF.  The guidelines of the committee are as bright and clear as the midday sun on a Tel Aviv beach in August. “The travel provisions of the gift rule severely limit the ability of Members and staff to accept travel from an entity that employs or retains a registered lobbyist or a registered agent of a foreign principal.” (Emphasis in original.)

Legistorm, which tracks congressional travel, explains that “even though AIPAC's primary purpose is lobbying, its nonprofit arm [AIEF] appears to provide a loophole for sponsored travel.” However, this eureka loophole that AIPAC uses does not withstand scrutiny. According to the latest publicly available tax return of AIEF, the organization has no paid employees -- an astounding feat in itself for an organization that raked in more than $26 million in 2009 and a mind-blowing accomplishment for an organization running three huge congressional delegations in one month.

An examination of AIPAC’s latest publicly available tax return reveals the sleight of hand.  AIPAC reports that in 2009, it very generously contributed more than $3.2 million of employee salaries to cover the staff costs of AIEF.  In other words, a 501(c)(4) organization with registered lobbyists is paying for the staff of a 501(c)(3) organization to run congressional delegations that cannot be funded by an organization that employs registered lobbyists.

Craig Holman, a government affairs lobbyist at Public Citizen who helped draft the new post-Abramoff federal lobbying and ethics reform legislation signed into law in 2007, agrees that something is rotten in state of AIPAC. According to Holman, “The House ethics rules do not provide an exemption for 501(c)(3)s that are controlled and directed by a lobbying entity to pay for travel junkets for members of Congress. When the ethics rules were written in 2007 as part of the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act (HLOGA), an exemption for 501(c)(3)s was written into the Senate rules – which I called the ‘AIPAC’ loophole – but the House under Speaker Pelosi stuck to strict travel rules for its members and declined to poke a comparable loophole into its ethics rules.

“Even if there were such a loophole in House rules,” Holman continues, “which there isn’t, it appears that the 501(c)(3) wing of AIPAC is little more than a front group designed to extend its lobbying activities beyond Capitol Hill. From 2000 to 2006, lobbyist Richard Kessler similarly attempted to evade the ethics rule prohibiting lobbyist- sponsored travel junkets by setting up a 501(c)(3) that he directly controlled to pay for the trips. HLOGA was passed in 2007 to end these types of evasions.”

Constituents should be irate that members of Congress accept fancy trips from AIPAC-affiliates and contributions from AIPAC-inspired political action committee (PACs) that result in the United States prioritizing weapons to Israel above our basic economic rights.  And the Committee on Ethics must investigate AIPAC’s skirting of travel regulations and shut down these trips that it has until now allowed.

Josh Ruebner is the national advocacy director of the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, a coalition of 375 organizations working to change U.S. policy to Israel/Palestine to support human rights, international law, and equality. He is a former analyst of Middle East affairs at Congressional Research Service.