Dale Sprusansky: I’m Dale Sprusansky. I’m the assistant editor of
the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. On behalf of the
Washington Report and the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern
Policy, the two organizations sponsoring this fourth annual event on
the Israel lobby, it’s my pleasure to welcome you here to today’s
conference. Before we get going, I just want to take a moment to
thank all of the people that made today possible - our donors. Such
a monumental undertaking would simply be impossible without their
continued support, and we are tremendously grateful for their
generosity.
Also, before we begin, we’d like to take a moment to acknowledge a
special person who is not here today at least physically. That is
our late publisher, Andrew Killgore, who died at the age of 97 in
December. Before co-founding the Washington Report in 1982, Andy had
a distinguished career in the U.S. Foreign Service serving in
Jerusalem, Amman, Baghdad, Tehran and many other cities. He
concluded his diplomatic career by serving as Jimmy Carter’s
ambassador to Qatar from 1977 to 1980.
Andy dedicated his retirement to the Washington Report seeing the
magazine as a way to provide Americans with a better understanding
of the Middle East, the region he loves dearly. In particular, Andy
fought tirelessly to challenge the Israel lobby’s powerful grip on
U.S. policy. Despite his advanced age, Andy came into the office
pretty much every day.
Before his passing, he participated actively in the planning of
today’s events. He would often comment about how encouraged he was
by the continued success of these events, and it instilled in him a
sense of hope for the future. So he may not be here today, but his
presence is surely felt. We do miss him dearly and we dedicate this
conference to him.
As we were planning this conference, one of the things that we
pondered was how the outcome of the November election would impact
this event. I think most people viewed Hillary Clinton, at least on
this issue, to be a much better known commodity for better or for
worse. That’s up to you to decide. We’re nonpartisan. We felt
confident that the lobby would remain a pertinent and timely issue
in the early days of her presidency.
But Donald Trump of course is a much different entity, an unknown
quantity in the political sphere, and some have argued this
independent streak would allow him to operate with greater autonomy
from lobbying groups. Others would point to his speech at AIPAC last
year as evidence that he doesn’t really plan on challenging the
lobby. Others would point to the influence of people, like his
son-in-law Jared Kushner, as evidence that maybe the lobby doesn’t
need to do so much convincing within the Oval Office. Then, of
course, there is also the theory that he himself really isn’t sure
what he’s going to do with this topic.
But regardless of where Trump moves U.S. policy on this issue, I
think the recent events have shown that this topic remains an
incredibly important one. Take for instance the anti-defamation
leagues’ recent defamation campaign against Keith Ellison during his
bid to become the chair of the DNC. The ADL and other pro-Israel
groups and donors sought to portray Ellison as an anti-Semite simply
because he openly questioned Israel’s influence on U.S. policy to
the region. On the topic of Islamophobia, just a few weeks ago Eli
Clifton of LobeLog reported that in 2015 AIPAC donated $60,000 to
well-known Islamophobe Frank Gaffney. We’ll hear more about the
Israel lobby’s ties with anti-Muslim groups later in the day from
Wajahat Ali.
President Trump, despite proposing a 28 percent reduction in
diplomacy and foreign aid, has pledged that Israel will continue to
receive the more than $3 billion in annual military assistance it
currently receives. Israel of course is the top recipient of U.S.
foreign aid, with Egypt being second. Then last week, as many of you
know, the UN released a report describing Israel’s treatment of
Palestinians as apartheid. Predictably, Israel balked at the report,
and the U.S. administration in turn swiftly pressured the UN to
repudiate the report. Unsurprisingly, the UN gave in and removed the
report from its website. Rima Khalaf, the head of the Economic and
Social Commission for Western Asia, the UN agency that commissioned
the report, resigned saying, quote, it was expected that Israel and
its allies would exercise pressure on the UN Secretary General to
distance himself from the report and that they would ask him to
withdraw it.
Back here on Capitol Hill, the 115th Congress has shown that it’s
business as usual when it comes to Israel. In just the past two
months, about 30 bills and resolutions directly relating to Israel
have been introduced by members of Congress. That’s more legislation
on Israel than on China, Russia, North Korea or even countries where
the U.S. is engaged in active military conflicts such as Iraq,
Syria, Afghanistan, and Yemen. In fact, perhaps only Mexico has more
legislation passed and introduced than Israel. Most of that is just
dealing with immigration and border issues such as environmental
agreements. So one can certainly argue that Israel is the preeminent
focus of foreign affairs legislation on the Hill. Of course, we’ll
be hearing more about how the lobby interacts with Congress from
former representatives Jim Moran and Nick Rahall later this morning.
So all of this is just to say that despite the media’s heavy focus
on potential Russian interference in the U.S. election, health care
policy, the Muslim ban, Trump’s tweets, et cetera, the lobby is
still at work and it remains an important and timely topic to
discuss. That is evidenced by the fact that all of you are here
today and that we’ve had our highest registration ever for this
event this year.
Before we begin, just some housekeeping items for you for a long day
today. To our online audience, we are streaming live. We encourage
you to send in your questions via Twitter @wrmea. For those of you
here, you can join the conversation with #israellobbycon. That
information is on the back of your program. The Wi-Fi information is
also on the back of your program.
Of course we ask that you keep your phones silenced. If you’re going
to be making kind of noise, typing heavily or something like that,
if you can move to the balcony so as not to distract the people
around you, that would be great. You can also take your
conversations to the Exhibition Hall next door and then check out
some of the great vendors, including the Middle East books and more
which is part of the Washington Report. The film you just saw will
also be available for purchase over there.
There will be book signings throughout the day, at lunch and during
the reception. They will be taking place by reception where you
signed in. There’s been a slight change to the schedule of the
signings. There will be slides throughout the day to provide you
with the up to date information about that.
During the Q&A, you guys, when you checked in, should have gotten
note cards and a pen. Use those note cards to write down your
questions. There will be ushers moving about to collect your
questions and bring them up to the moderator. Please don’t come up
and bring them up yourself because it can interfere with the camera
shot and cause some problems. Of course, just a reminder, please
don’t do any recording unless you have received prior permission.
We will have a reception following today’s events over in the
Exhibition Hall. There’s a red ticket in your badge that will be
available for free drinks, so don’t lose that.
Just two notes on schedule of changes today. Eric Margolis was
previously scheduled to attend here today. But due to an illness, he
will not be able to attend. And just this week Katherine Franke from
Columbia Law came down with pneumonia, so she will not be here
today. But no need to fear, we have Maria LaHood from the Center for
Constitutional Rights to fill in. She’s wonderful. She came here
last year. For those of you who were here, you will remember her.
With that, we’re going to get going with our first speaker of the
day, Grant Smith. Grant Smith is the director of the Institute for
Research: Middle Eastern Policy. Again, the co-sponsor of today’s
events. He’s the author of the 2016 book Big Israel: How Israel’s
Lobby Moves America which covers the history, functions, and
activities of Israel affinity organizations in America. Grant has
written two unofficial histories of AIPAC and many other books.
His organization is constantly working on Freedom of Information Act
request and uncovering important documents especially on Israel’s
nuclear program. I can tell you that few, if any people, work harder
on this issue than Grant. Between his frequent research, appearance
in FOIA court, his writing, his polling and his 5:00 AM emails,
Grant is truly a one-man machine. Today he will be sharing polling
data on U.S. aid to Israel conducted by his organization and by
other pollsters. And he will take the stage as soon as he assembles
everything.