"At dinner that night, AIPAC Executive Director How- ard Kohr, as he does each year, read the "roll call" of dignitaries in attendance. It included a majority of the Senate, a quarter of the House, more than fifty ambassadors, and dozens of administration officials. Reciting the names took twenty-seven minutes in all, with each name greeted by a roar, the loudest going to Joe Lieberman...."
"Democrats, though, still get most of the pro-Israel dollars. Among AIPAC's staunchest backers in Congress are such well-known liberals as Nancy Pelosi, Henry Waxman, Jerrold Nadler, and Howard Berman. Steny Hoyer, the House minority whip, is so reliable that "he might as well be on the AIPAC payroll," a congressional staffer told me. Hillary Clinton is equally dependable. Still attempting to live down her 1998 declaration of support for a Palestinian state and the kiss she gave Suha Arafat in 1999, Clinton has sought to compensate by voting AIPAC's way on almost every issue. In the current election cycle, she has received $80,000 in pro-Israel money—more than any other congressional candidate."
"As one congressman put it:
We're so predictable, so supportive, so unquestioning, of Israel's actions that in the long run we've alienated much of the Arab world. We've passed any number of resolutions making it clear that we didn't want Clinton or Bush to put pressure on Israel with regard to settlements, or negotiations. If we passed a resolution that fully embraced the road map, it would make an enormous difference in the Arab world, and it would help undermine terrorists. But you would never get a measure like that through the international relations or appropriations committees. Congress would never pass a resolution that was in any way critical of anything Israel has done.
I asked the congressman if he was willing to be identified. He said no."
"One key part of the network is the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. AIPAC helped to create this think tank in 1985, with Martin Indyk, AIPAC's research director, becoming its first director. Today, the Washington Institute is fully independent of AIPAC, and there is some diversity among its fellows (Dennis Ross is one). Overall, though, its policies mirror AIPAC's. Its executive director, Robert Satloff, is a neoconservative with very hawkish views on the Middle East. Its deputy director of research, Patrick Clawson, has been a leading proponent of regime change in Iran and of a US confrontation with Tehran over its nuclear program. (AIPAC features him as an expert on its Web site.) Raymond Tanter, an adjunct scholar at the institute, has been championing the MEK, or People's Mujaheddin, a shadowy group of Iranian guerrillas who want to overthrow the government in Tehran (and whom the State Department regards as terrorists). Members of the Washington Institute's board of advisers include Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, James Woolsey, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Mort Zuckerman, and Max Kampelman; its single most important source of funding is Larry Weinberg, one of AIPAC's Gang of Four, and his wife Barbi."
"This research provides the raw material for AIPAC's efforts to intimidate and silence opponents. The editor of "Activities Update" is Michael Lewis, the son of Bernard Lewis, the Princeton scholar and interpreter of the Arab world who gave advice to the Bush administration in the months preceding the war in Iraq."