July 1993: Right-Wing American-Israeli Lobbying Organization Opposes Oslo Accords

Israel’s ambassador to the US, Itamar Rabinovich, tells the influential US lobbying group the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) that Israel is prepared to make territorial concessions to the Palestinians as part of the soon-to-be-signed Oslo Accords (see September 13, 1993). The AIPAC members are stonily silent; soon after, AIPAC president Harvey Friedman calls Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Yossi Beilin “a little slimeball” for helping make the land-for-peace deal. Though Friedman is asked to resign from AIPAC over his remarks, his message is clear: AIPAC is not so much pro-Israel as it is pro-Likud and in favor of that party’s hardline policies. Both the Israeli and US governments support trading land for peace, but US neoconservatives, and many members of Israel’s Likud Party, despise the policy. One of the most prominent US neoconservatives, Douglas Feith, currently a member of Rabinovich’s staff, is asked to leave his position because of his vocal opposition to the peace process. [Unger, 2007, pp. 121]