Free Republic

As the American Israel Public Affairs Committee's annual conference opens this week in Washington, the group finds itself caught squarely amid the quadruple crosshairs of a deeply divided Israel and the fractured state of U.S. politics. AIPAC's president, Howard Kohr, who is by both temperament and avocation a centrist consensus builder with a strictly bipartisan U.S. mandate, is attempting to thread the needle in a way that will test his prodigious powers of persuasion and almost uncanny political instincts. But thread the needle he must, because the threads of the complex tapestry that forms the U.S.-Israel bond need mending. The...

When Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) became the 34th vote in favor of the Iran Deal, it was touted as sealing the support for the President Obama’s signature foreign policy initiative. It was fascinating for two reasons. First, that such a major policy was being adopted despite bi-partisan rejection. Second, the analysis started to flow of how the powerful lobbying organization, American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), had lost such a major political battle. More importantly, what will AIPAC do now that the deal has been backhandedly approved? Once the Iran deal was approved by the negotiators many supporters of Israel...