(Continued from page 15) policy when, in fact, AIPAC had a lot to do with the promotion of the two-state plan in Israel. • Helping fund, strategize, and manage Barack Obama's successful 2008 presidential campaign. The former president of AIPAC, Lee "Rosie" Rosenberg, was the national finance cochairman of the 2008 Obama presidential campaign and one of his Middle East advisors. Alan Solow, another Obama funder, became the chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. • At AIPAC's annual policy conference on May 19, 2011, Obama called on Israel to go back to the 1967 borders with agreedto land swaps. The leadership said nothing in response. • AIPAC had a major influence on the Republican Party accepting the two-state policy in 2012. The Republican National Committee 3 voted in favor of the one-state resolution in January 2012 in a meeting in New Orleans. • But in late August 2012, Congressman Eric Cantor (R-Va.) and AIPAC totally disregarded the plan and pressured the Republican National Committee to add the twostate solution to the Republican Platform for the 2012 Republican Convention in order to be in step with the Netanyahu government's two-state position. • In June, AIPAC's president gave John Kerry's diplomacy a reportedly "hearty" endorsement 4 in a meeting with U.S. senators— and, furthermore, AIPAC was in the room 5 when Kerry and 28 JewishVoiceToday.org | November/December 2013
Martin Indyk briefed American Jewish leaders on their progress— also on Thursday, Aug. 8. • Last but certainly not least, AIPAC does not place any value on Israel's biblical right or claim to the Land of Israel. The idea of giving Judea, Samaria, and East Jerusalem for an Arab state does not matter to them. 1. American Israel Public Affairs Committee website, http://www.aipac.org/. 2. “Most Palestinian Arabs are descendants of the Muslim migrants who came to that area between 1845 -1947 from many Middle Eastern countries,” says Yoram Ettinger. “Arab migrant workers were imported by the Ottoman Empire and by the British Mandate (which defeated the Ottomans in 1917) for infrastructure projects.” When the Jordanians and Egyptians controlled the West Bank area and the Gaza Strip from 1948 -1967, there were no people known as “Palestinians.” Yasser Arafat formed The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in 1964. 3. Mitchell Plitnick, “GOP Officially Endorses One-State Solution,” http://mitchellplitnick. com/2012/01/19/gop-officially-endorses-onestate-solution/. 4. “AIPAC, Other Pro-Israel Leaders at Senate Meet Laud Kerry Initiative,” JTA, June 26, 2013, http://www.jta.org/2013/06/26/newsopinion/politics/aipac-others-commend-kerryinitiative-in-senate-meet. 5. “Kerry Briefs Jewish Leaders on Peace Talks,” JTA, August 8, 2013, http://www.jta. org/2013/08/08/news-opinion/united-states/ kerry-briefs-jewish-leaders-on-peace-talks.
William Koenig is the director of “Koenig International News” (http://watch.org), an Internet news service with readers and e-mail subscribers in 50 states and 105 countries, and has been a White House correspondent since January 2001. Koenig publishes an online weekly news report called “Koenig’s Eye View from the White House” that focuses on biblically relevant world news and White House news from a Christian perspective. He has authored Eye to Eye: Facing the Consequences of Dividing Israel, which is in its 14th printing, and published the book in Hebrew.