'Transparent Cabal' Rejected for Anti-AIPAC Conference

I naturally find this treatment disconcerting, though I must add, it was not unexpected.

Special thanks to: Veterans Today

(WASHINGTON D.C.) - Move Over organizers made a strong effort to showcase Jewish opposition to AIPAC… as if protest is not an obligation of US citizens.”

The existence of such an official opposition allows critics to blow off steam without having any real impact; it creates the pretense of freedom without the reality.

It was good to hear that AIPAC’s 2011 conference in Washington during the latter part of May faced a counter-conference and demonstration, Move Over AIPAC, organized by Code Pink: Women for Peace, a group that has protested America’s wars in the Middle East. This is the first time any large group has dared to make such a protest against AIPAC and Code Pink deserves much credit for its effort. Unfortunately, however, the restrictions placed on the criticism of the Israel lobby were such that “The Transparent Cabal” was apparently beyond the pale. As Harry Clark points out in his article, “Move Over, AIPAC,” in CounterPunch (May 30), “[t]here was an ‘upstairs, downstairs’ feel to the discussion of AIPAC.”

Read the article here [http://counterpunch.org/clark05302011.html ] or in the text below*. John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt spoke “upstairs” in the plenary session.  Since Mearsheimer and Walt are prestigious academics (who dared to write about the “Israel lobby”), Code Pink apparently felt safe in featuring them.

Relegated  to a “downstairs” workshop were some non-mainstream hard-line critics of Israel and its lobby–Jeff Blankfort, Janet McMahon, of Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, and Grant Smith of Institute for Research Middle east Policy, Philip Giraldi, Executive Director of  Council for National Interest, D.C.  Alison Weir,  President of the Council for the National Interest (CNI) and Executive Director of If Americans Knew (which deals with the plight of the Palestinians), served as moderator for this workshop and provided a list of speakers for the conference, with my name being included.  But, as Clark, points out, I was rejected. He likewise observes that liberal Jewish pressure caused the outspoken Helen Thomas to pull out.

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I asked Alison Weir the reason for my rejection and she replied that she had not been told. Over a month before the AIPAC event, I had been contacted by a Move Over AIPAC representative, and I sent the group a link to my web site and an e-copy of “The Transparent Cabal,” after which I never heard from them again. The question here is not simply why I was rejected but why my rejection was not explained.

Clark implies, correctly I believe, that Code Pink wanted to play it safe and thus kept the more controversial/hardline people out of the limelight or rejected them entirely. As pointed out earlier, Mearsheimer and Walt could be seen as safe because of their mainstream credentials and because, as Clark points out, their tendency to mitigate some of their criticism. Jeff Blankfort, an excellent speaker who certainly pulls no punches on the issue of Israel and its US minions, was probably deemed safer than me because of his Jewish ancestry. Since it is widely believed among cautious gentiles that people of Jewish backgrounds should be immune from the lethal charge of anti-Semitism, reliance on their criticism of Israel and its supporters is often preferred as a means of smear protection. In this regard, Clark points out that the Move Over organizers made a strong effort to showcase Jewish opposition to AIPAC, writing “[t]here were assurances that ‘AIPAC is bad for the Jews’ as if this makes protest permissible, as if protest is not an obligation of US citizens.”

It should be pointed out that this is hardly the first time that I have been rejected or ignored without any reason being given, but it is instead quite the norm. For example, more than a few critics of US Middle East wars will not make any comment on my work, even in private, when it has been presented to them. And journals that express anti-war opinions have refused to review my book without any reasons reflecting on the quality of the work. If my work were regarded as defective, one would think that at least a few of these individuals and journals would be willing to point out its flaws in private, and even in public, critical book reviews being hardly unknown. It is this experience that enables me to reach the following conclusion regarding the Move Over AIPAC event: the organizers ignored the merits of what I have written simply deeming me as one whose presence might negatively stigmatize their whole event. They could not, however, openly say such a thing, hence the lack of any explanation for their decision.

I naturally find this treatment disconcerting, though I must add, it was not unexpected. However, the significance of this approach far transcends the negative effects on the dissemination of my book and my personal success. For the underlying fear of being smeared as anti-Semitic limits the criticism of Israel and its American supporters–in terms of who can make it, where it can be presented, and what can be said–to such an extent that it becomes largely ineffective. In fact, it becomes something akin to the official opposition that is often allowed to exist in authoritarian, and even totalitarian, states. The existence of such an official opposition allows critics to blow off steam without having any real impact; it creates the pretense of freedom without the reality.

– Stephen J. Sniegoski,  author of The Transparent Cabal