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IPFS News Link • Lobbyist and Lobbying

Is AIPAC Finished?

• https://original.antiwar.com by Grant Smith

These are desperate times for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, AIPAC. AIPAC has canceled its single most important program. The lobby's grip on Congress is slipping and its influence in the Foreign Affairs Committee has been truncated. Is AIPAC finished? There are three reasons to believe it may be.

First came the cancellation of AIPAC's March 2021 policy conference, ostensibly due to "uncertainties created by the COVID-19 pandemic." The disadvantage this brings to the Israel lobby ecosystem which is the "spear" behind AIPAC's "tip" cannot be overstated. The conference is the Israel lobby ecosystem's single key lobbying initiative because every year it allows "citizen lobbyists" to interface with their representatives. The amount AIPAC discloses that it spends to the Clerk of Congress on its own dozen or so professional lobbyists is quite small compared to the expenditures on the policy conference, and there is a reason for that.