81 members of Congress are now in Israel on an all-expense paid junket sponsored by Aipac’s nominally non-profit American-Israel Education Foundation. The value of the trip for the member and spouse is $8,000, meaning Aipac is forking over nearly $700,000 to fund this massive hasbara undertaking.
In the interest of transparency and knowing where our tax dollars are spent, I thought it would be important to list every name of every junketeer so their constituents can know that their member is on the pro-Israel gravy train. Here are the 33 I’ve discovered so far (please add more in the thread below):
Finally, there is the ethical and legal dimension of the junket that is deeply disturbing. Congress members are not allowed to take such trips if sponsored by groups which employ registered lobbyists, which Aipac does. So to get around the law, Aipac established AIEF as a 501c3 which has no lobbyists on its payroll. In fact, AIEF has NO employees on its payroll according to its IRS 990 report. Aipac “lends” AIEF its staff to organize these grand tours of the Israeli heartland. Because members may accept trips from non-profits, they can do a legal end around ethics laws by lining up at the AIEF trough for a generous feeding.
So what does $700,000 buy for a lobbying group these days? It buys tons of meaningless ‘sense of Congress’ resolutions that buttress every wild-eyed pet project and policy Aipac is peddling. These resolutions prove nothing to anyone except that they give Aipac’s donors a sense of their own power in wielding clubs over their captive Congressional audience. I suppose for the group these junkets are an insurance policy in case Bibi and his far right government ever really need Congress’ help in swatting away a real threat to Likud hegemony–like a UN vote for Palestinian statehood or a concerted international BDS campaign which gained traction and posed a significant financial threat to Israel. Then Aipac could pull out all the stops to obstruct Obama (if he ever dared to do such a thing) from crossing Israel in a truly serious way.
