How Israel Made AIPAC
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) has recently established its own political action committees. AIPAC is using tens of millions of dollars of PAC money to knock off candidates for office it believes won’t be sufficiently deferential to the government of Israel. There is a lot of current analysis about this in social and even legacy news media. Most of it has one thing in common: no history about how, when or why AIPAC came into existence. What exactly is AIPAC and where does it come from? Who founded AIPAC, and when? What did AIPAC’s founder do before creating a lobby for Israel in the U.S.? What happened when he ran into trouble with the Senate and Department of Justice? How does AIPAC history inform us about foreign influence on U.S. political campaigns and American Middle East policy today? Those are questions we answer in this thirteen-episode podcast.
Episodes
A declassified 1961 Senate Foreign Relations Committee memo finally reveals the original reason for ever investigating the Israel lobby. In 1954, Israel launched the Operation Susannah false flag terrorist attacks on U.S. facilities in Egypt aimed at scuttling the return of the Suez Canal to Eqypt. But the Israeli terrorists were caught and prosecuted, leading to a diplomatic crisis with the U.S.
The Senate Foreign Relations Commit...
AIPAC learns the more entangled and influential its funders become in elite political circles, the less likely its operatives will be prosecuted for electoral fraud and joint espionage operations with Israel's government. Foreign Agents Registration Act enforcement gradually becomes a cudgel to wield exclusively against out-of-favor foreign governments as elite law firms and associates of high officials such as Marion Javits and B...
JFK's initiative to inspect the Israeli nuclear weapons production facility at Dimona and keep the Israelis from going nuclear dies in Dallas. AIPAC strives mightily, promoting legacy media reports, to convince Americans that Dimona will never produce nuclear weapons. Barrons charges the State Department "once more placed itself in a ridiculous posture by accusing Israel of conspiring to build atomic weapons."
AIPAC's umbrella gro...
The Department of Justice orders AIPAC's umbrella organization to begin registering as an Israeli foreign agent on November 21, 1962. JFK friend Simon H. Rifkind is hired to help the lobby wriggle out of the order, claiming they would stop laundering Jewish Agency funding into the United States for Israel lobbying and propaganda. Rifkind argues that registering as a foreign agent would "choke the very life" out of the Zionist movem...
AIPAC founder Isaiah L. Kenen flees for Iran as the Justice Department moves closer to registering the Israel lobby as a foreign agent because of its overseas funding. The American Council for Judaism fights the Zionist takeover of comunal fundraising entities in the US. Senate Foreign relations Committee investigators uncover massive Jewish Agency/Israeli government funding flows into U.S. lobbying and public relations via seized ...
How did AIPAC founder Isaiah Kenen use the Near East Report to keep score of Congress member votes that impacted Israel? Why did Kenen constantly call out the American Council for Judaism and Senator J. W. Fulbright in the Near East Report? What kinds of cartoons did the Near East Report run and how did they frame the plight of Palestinian refugees and Arabs? What role did Kenen play inserting Israel into "planks" of both major po...
How did Harry Truman resist Isaiah Kenen's Israel lobby public relations issue framing? What were David Ben-Gurion's directives to the American Zionist Council where AIPAC functioned as the lobbying and PR division? According to Kenen, how were Israel's core interests served by forming AIPAC? How much was Kenen paid by Israel's government to lobby American politicians in a delegation to Israel after a $65 million aid package passed...
What was the Israel Office of Information and AIPAC founder Isaiah L. Kenen's role at IOI? How long did Kenen remain as an employee of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs at IOI? What propaganda information did IOI omit in its FARA filings? How did Kenen, chafing under FARA, maintain an active lobbying campaign in the U.S. Congress for foreign aid while still operating as an employee of Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs? Why...
Which Israeli pre-state terrorist and arms smuggling entities freely operated in the U.S.? How and why did they penetrate the U.S. Department of Treasury? How and when did the Secretary of Treasury threaten President Franklin D. Roosevelt's State Department with charges of anti-Semitism if the administration refused to support Zionist aims? Who was Vladimir Jabotinsky?" What was the "Transfer Agreement?" How did U.S. war surplus ar...
Why did the U.S. enact the Foreign Agents Registration Act? When and why did enforcement move from the State Department to the Department of Justice? What were the key provisions of FARA and how did they change over time? What was the Jewish Agency for Israel and why did it have to register under FARA? Which U.S. individuals and organizations were prosecuted for violating FARA? Podcast website: https://IRmep.org
In what ways was the creation of Israel like a business startup? What did the nascent Israel lobby want from President Harry Truman and how did they approach and lobby him? Why did the U.S. State and War Departments oppose U.S. recognition of Israel? Why was the American Council for Judaism also opposed? How was Isaiah L. Kenen involved in official UN missions traveling to Palestine on behalf of the Jewish Agency? What secret docum...
Who was AIPAC's founder Isaiah L. Kennen? Where was Kenen from and how did he get his start? How did his father's disastrous wartime dealings supporting Russia's Tsar impact the family? How did Kenen's journalism morph from lobbying for labor rights, to U.S. entry into WWII and finally the formation and U.S. subsidization of Israel? Which major U.S. Zionist leaders did Kenen work with, and why was Theodore Herzl's plan for a Jewish...
Why is the history of the intense battle between the U.S. Department of Justice, Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Kennedy administration and AIPAC so important, but so little known? Why is AIPAC circumspect about its origin story? How has AIPAC largely written its founder, Isaiah L. Kenen, out of that history? What three developments concerning the formation of Israel have had an enormous impact on Americans?
Israel's lobby the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is knocking out American politicians it thinks won't be deferential enough to the Israeli government. But what is AIPAC and where does it come from? When was a key chapter of AIPAC's secret history finally declassified and released by the U.S. Department of Justice? How to subscribe to this podcast and support IRmep.
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