In the Line of Fire: Israeli Subversion of African American Elections.

By: Lorenzo Komboa Ervin

It's only been very recently, since the passage of the 1964 Voting Rights Act that African Americans have had the right to vote in Alabama, Georgia, and other Southern states in the United States. Due to centuries of Black oppression, and decades of formalized racial segregation, racist officials in the South used all manner of illegal methods and devices to prevent Blacks from having an impact on the electoral process, or to thwart the will of Black people to elect representatives of their own choosing.

Now we can add another device to subvert our ability to freely vote: Jewish PAC money and intervention by the Israeli state. This is a sordid deal which stinks to the high heavens! The recent electoral defeats of two Black congressional incumbents, Earl Hilliard in Alabama, and Cynthia McKinney of Georgia, both of whom dared to demand an equal consideration of Palestinian interests in the Middle East, and to urge the American government to apply evenhandedness in its foreign policy, made them targets of a Zionist political lobby, the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, which raised several millions of dollars on behalf of hand-picked candidates it favored.

AIPAC, which is notorious for being a political bag-man for rich Jewish businessmen and a covert financial agent for the Israeli governement itself, literally bought these Democratic party races with unheard of amounts of PAC money in local congressional primaries, estimated to be $3-5 million. They tainted the entire election with this massive amount of Jewish money from outside the district. It helped their candidates buy ads in the local media, and spread vicious lies.

Some of these attack ads in the Atlanta newspapers and television even went so far as to claim that Mckinney took money from and was allied with "Arabterrorist" organizations. It also sent or hired political consultants to work with the Georgia Republican Party to mobilize large numbers of whitevoters in the Atlanta suburban areas, to vote in the Democratic primary. So the 'hit" was on, to get rid of two black congressional critics of Israel's foreign policy.

The thing to bear in mind with all this is that AIPAC is actually an illegal lobby or political action committee, which has carried on its activities for years in violation of Federal Election Commission rules governing any PAC's methods of fundraising, and disbursal of such funds to candidates. In fact, for many years AIPAC refused to even register as a Political Action Committee at all, or account for any funds it raised to the FEC, who were apparently afraid to ask. One supposes that AIPAC figured it had apparently even intimidated the American government agency officials who are charged with regulating campaign financial contributions.

But, several years ago AIPAC was sued by a coalition of Arab and civil liberties groups, and other individuals, in federal court for violating U.S. campaign finance laws. Subsequently, in a December 6, 1996 ruling, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ordered them to register with the government as a PAC, and ordered FEC to enforce the law against AIPAC, as it would any other PAC. It is still not clear at this time that AIPAC ever registered as a political action committee, and has never registered as a foreign agent representative, even though for many years it was clearly working as a lobbyist for Israel. If it has not even onceregistered as a PAC, then that would mean that all of its actions are clearly illegal, and in contempt of the court order. So, you say to yourself, what moredoes the Department of Justice need to make a case?

But you would be naive. AIPAC, with an annual budget of more than $12-15 million, has been operating for many years as a foreign lobbyist to secure a pro-Israeli U.S. foreign policy and to maintain Israel as the largest single recipient of American foreign aid ($5-6 billion year). Ironically, it had been that role which had helped it avoid scrutiny for its role as political bag-man in American elections. Its controversial role in these elections unquestionably states that it is a PAC, so it should not be allowed to continue to skirt campaign finance laws any longer. It must be forced to account for the money it raises and disburses to candidates, not after the fact, when it has bought off yet another American campaign.

One thing that we must understand: it's not just because they were Black that AIPAC went after Hilliard and McKinney, they have also wiped out the careers of other political notables like presidential candidate Adlai E. Stevenson , gubertorial candidate Adlai Stevenson III, Illinois Senator Charles H. Percy, San Mateo (CA.) Congressman Paul E. "Pete" McCloskey, twice Undersecretary of State, George W. Ball, Arkansas Senator J. William Fullbright, Texas Governor John Connoley, Illinois Congressman Paul Findley, Kentucky Senator Walter Huddleston, and Senator James Abourzek of South Dakota, all of whom were white. So this political targeting is done to remove anti-Israeli critics, but it also effectively intimidates other politicians from questioning America's pro-Israel policies and military appropriations, looming around a total $100 billion at this point, at the rate of $5.0 billion per year!

AIPAC is thus a dangerous, subversive organization, which like the CIA, destabilizes foreign regimes by removing unpopular leaders, or subverting elections in a similar fashion all over the world. If we condemn the CIA for doing that, then we must denounce Israel for doing it now.

Israel through AIPAC, destabilizes the American electoral process on behalf of a foreign government. Israel decides for itself to silence all critics of its policies and any dirty dealing with American officials. They do it with money in political contests now, but who is to say that in the future they will not do it with a bullet or by using the police or FBI with frame up charges? Mossad, the foreign intelligence agency of the Israeli government, might decide to assassinate or frame up any "troublesome" national Black leaders in the future, if we do nothing now. If they do not fear an outcry from Black American it will only encourage them to carry out even sterner measures later, like in the Middle East itself, when they assassinate Palestinian leaders. It is not farfetched at all, in fact it's predictable.

Thus, this Israeli covert action campaign cannot continue to take place. We must take back our rights to freely vote in election contests, as well as to elect our own leadership. Certainly, the American Jewish community would be greatly incensed to find that several of its political leaders were bought and paid for by outside interests. Just as we should feel incensed now.

For Black political activists, it is really important that we explain to Black people and our allies just what took place. Our best protection is the truth, since AIPAC likes to split the community and commandeer the local press. But besides political education, we need to have a basic understanding that Israel is not our friend and that we cannot remain neutral on Middle East isues, because this is what we will get.

Now more than ever we need to understand what is really happening in the Middle East, not what a Jewish-controlled and corporate media wants us to believe, nor what George W. Bush and the oil companies want us to believe. We need to expose Israel's hand in this whole despicable matter.

Besides closing whatever loophole(s) still exist that continue to let AIPAC operate with such impunity, we need to think seriously about independent Black political action on the local level outside of the Democratic or Republican party system, and outlawing such PAC funds on the grassroots level. We certainly must prevent Israel from using American aid money to subvert local elections in this country, since there seems to be some evidence of these funds being laundered and re-used by AIPAC.

A group of Black lawyers should sue Israel and AIPAC just like the Arab legal group did some years ago for their continued campaign finance violations. There should also be congressional investigations of this mess, but due to the influence peddling and fear of the pro-Israel lobby among U.S. politicians, that won't happen without a serious fight. Neither can we expect the US mass media to expose all this in American newspapers or television. As usual, they won't say one bad thing about Israel, and this is helping the Bush administration lead the U.S. into war with Iraq on Israel's behalf. In fact, it seems to be what got the country attacked on September 11th, either by Israeli Mossad agents as a provocation, or by Middle Eastern guerrillas angry at America's continued arming and blind political support of Israel.  

So, it's left to those of us concerned about the welfare of our Black (perhaps, and all ehtnic) communities to do grassroots organizing, to tell the truth about Israel, and to rouse the people in our communities so that they can bring a stop to this intrusion in our political affairs. We cannot allow an already corrupt electoral process to be totally usurped by Israel and its moneymen.

The most important thing to do about it however is to create an unshakeable political bond between Black people in America and Palestinians over Middle East issues, because we are also finally beginning to understand how racist and corrupt the Israeli regime is. Incidents like the subversion of these election contests should educate us first hand what the Israeli government is capable of. But, we are not the only Black peoples to learn this hard lesson: the anti-apartheid movement of South Africa discovered that Israel was not only arming the whites in that country, helping them even develop a nuclear weapon, but that the Israelis were one of the major trade partners economically upholding the apartheid regime, defying an international boycott.

So if we understand how dangerous Israel is, then we can easily understand that they will not hesitate to use Africans in America as a pawn in their international campaign against the Palestinian people.  This election removes all doubt, we are clearly one of Israel's enemies, and we are in the line of fire.

We may not be getting beaten or shot like the Palestinians are every day in the Occupied Territories, but we have been robbed of honest political representatives, who have been replaced by stooges of Israel.

(Part one of a series on Israeli spying and subversion in America).

An occasional column by By: Lorenzo Komboa Ervin