AIPAC’s Washington policy conference next month is drawing intense scrutiny and unprecedented resistance. AIPAC has worked quietly for years to tripwire the United States into war with Iran. Soon it will “ask” Congress and the president to define “nuclear weapons capability” as the threshold for war, essentially demanding an immediate attack. Because Iran presents no military threat to the United States, many Americans wonder exactly where such costly and potentially disastrous policies are formulated. Recently declassified FBI files reveal how Israeli government officials first orchestrated public relations and policies through the U.S. lobby. Counter-espionage investigations of proto-AIPAC’s first coordinating meetings with the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the head of Mossad provide a timely and useful framework for understanding how AIPAC continues to localize and market Israeli government policies in America.
Although AIPAC claims it rose “from a small pro-Israel public affairs boutique in the 1950s,” its true origin can be traced to Oct. 16, 1948. This is the date AIPAC’s founder Isaiah L. Kenen and four others established the Israel Office of Information under Israel’s U.N. mission. It was later moved under the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The IOI opened offices in New York City, Washington, and Los Angeles, which became testbeds for working out how Israeli government leaders would promote lobbying initiatives through public relations harnessing the power and financial support of American organizations and supporters. Although the FBI nervously noted IOI founder Kenen had become a member of the Communist Party in 1937 while working as a newspaperman at the Plain Dealer in Cleveland, he was never the subject of a criminal investigation. Only because Kenen interacted with so many U.S. and foreign nationals who were targets of espionage, foreign counter-intelligence, and domestic security investigations (such as super-lobbyist Abraham Feinberg, Israeli diplomats, and assorted Mossad officers) did Kenen’s movements appear as cross-references in hundreds of pages of recently declassified FBI documents [.pdf].
Isaiah Kenen became a savvy PR operative working as the director of public relations for the Israeli United Nations delegation after he left the Plain Dealer. It is because of Kenen’s public relations acumen and contacts the IOI could insert Israeli propaganda directly into establishment U.S. media. One IOI Public Relations Board meeting held in the Israeli Consulate General in New York on May 9, 1949, pushed U.S. media initiatives aimed at boosting Israel’s economy. The IOI wanted to “place a series of pieces in from eight to twelve top magazines” including Reader’s Digest and Cosmopolitan by “making funds available for important propaganda programs.” New York IOI focused on “U.N., Organizations (Jewish), and the press emanating from New York” while the IOI Washington office covered “other embassies, Congress, Washington Press, and the National Press Club.”
It was during a July 18, 1949, meeting that Israeli Counsel Reuven Dafni informed Isaiah Kenen and others that Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett in coordination with Mossad founder Reuven Shiloah and Israeli ambassador to the United States Eliahu Elath had recently conducted a strategy session about public relations and “thrashed out” everything except for the question of funding. Kenen reported that his New York IOI was ready to go. The FBI description reveals that it was already functioning somewhat like a Mossad intelligence outpost. IOI New York was responsible for receiving information cables from Israel. “One member of the staff spent much of the day decoding and stenciling” the cables. IOI offices established secure communications crisscrossing the U.S. Dafni “reported that his [Kenen's] office and the Washington IOI worked out a code so that classified messages could be translated.”
