“For more than half a century, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee has worked to help make Israel more secure by ensuring that American support remains strong. From a small pro-Israel public affairs boutique in the 1950s, AIPAC has grown into a 100,000-member national grassroots movement described by The New York Times as ‘the most important organization affecting America’s relationship with Israel.’”

Here’s how STOP AIPAC, a group formed by peace and justice activists in the San Francisco Bay Area, describes the lobby:

“AIPAC had played a key role in fomenting support for the U.S. invasion of Iraq. It is playing an even greater role in supporting a future military strike against the people of Iran… Only rarely is a critical word uttered among politicians regarding AIPAC and its associates that support unjust and aggressive and disastrous U.S. policies toward the peoples of the Middle East… For too long, policies that support Israeli militarism and occupation have gone unchallenged. Political voices raising even minor disagreements with prevailing policies are silenced or subject to campaigns of intimidation.”

Whichever view is right about AIPAC, the group – and Israel – certainly got a boost recently with the vote on House Resolution 867 which called on “the President and the Secretary of State to oppose unequivocally any endorsement or further consideration of the Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict… .”

You may recall from an earlier blog, that the report, by Richard Goldstone, a widely respected former prosecutor at the U.N. war crimes tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, condemned both Israel and the Palestinian authorities for war crimes during Israel’s military invasion of Gaza from December 27 to January 18. But it singled out Israel for “actions amounting to war crimes, possibly crimes against humanity.”

There were 344 representatives who voted for the resolution; only 36 voted against it. Washington state representatives Brian Baird and Jim McDermott were part of the lonely stand against the resolution. All the other Washington state representatives – Jay Inslee, Rick Larsen, Doc Hastings, Cathy McMorris, Norm Dicks, Dave Reichert and Adam Smith – voted in favor.

I’d like to hear sometime our lawmakers’ views on AIPAC.