Two incidents at AIPAC illustrate the range of human experience that politics brings out.
Sitting in the press area awaiting the afternoon speeches yesterday I said hello to the woman seated next to me. She was there reporting — or rather “experiencing” — AIPAC for a left-leaning web outlet. She explained she was a psychologist and student of “conflict transformation.” She told me, “You see the problem is that Israel and the U.S. are confronting Iran instead of transforming the relationship.” Okay, this was going to be good so I played along. I asked, “What if they don’t want to be transformed?” She grimaced: “Oh, well right there — ‘they’ is the problem.” She then proceeded to tell me that “we” never got anywhere with threats or sanctions and you only make the other side angry. I thought of bringing up South Africa (a whole lot of transformation there brought about by international isolation) and the downfall of the Soviet Union, but the program began. And I fretted whether she was channeling what passes for sophisticated thinking in the current administration.
But all was not grim. Two young African American men, Darius Jones and Jarrod Jordan, spoke to the gathering in the afternoon program that followed. They explained that they had come to last year’s conference and heard Barack Obama speak about the inseparable relationship between the U.S. and Israel. Inspired by this they started thinking of Jewish Americans’ contribution to the civil rights movement and what they could do to strengthen the ties between Israel and the U.S. So through their organization they began to lobby for divestment in Iran. In December, “just in time for Chanukah,” they said, the Atlanta City council agreed to divest all city funds from firms that do business in Iran. This was followed by a similar action by another Georgia county. They are now setting their sites on historic black colleges. The reaction of the crowd was jubilant. The desire for reconciliation between the Jewish and African American communities, which to some extent maintain a still-strained relationship, was clearly on display.
Well, it was an interesting afternoon, to say the least.
