A jewish high school girl describes an AIPAC conference. It's a good lesson on how jews propagandize their own:

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2006-03-31

Wandering Jew - Propaganda for the Insipid

by Alice Ollstein

I’ve been working as teacher’s assistant at my temple’s religious school for the past four years. I love teaching my second-graders their first Hebrew letters. I love watching my sixth-graders find Israel on a map. But what I love most is the connection my job gives me to Judaism and to Israel, where I hope to travel during college. That is why I jumped at my grandfather’s invitation to attend the annual American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) policy conference in Washington D.C., where I could join more than 1,000 students and 4,000 adults in discussing the future of Israel. I returned from the conference, however, feeling manipulated, disturbed and disgusted with a great deal of what I witnessed there.

The first thing I noticed about the conference, besides the sheer volume of participants, was the carefully manufactured atmosphere of fear and urgency. The cavernous hall that hosted all our meals and plenary sessions was always filled with dramatic classical music, red lighting and gigantic signs reading “Now Is The Time.” That, combined with the montages of terrorism footage projected onto six giant screens, whipped the audience into a “Save Israel” fervor that most found inspiring. By the time we finished our meal, the audience seemed eager to agree to anything that would protect Israel — even war.

The conservative slant of the conference became obvious as I chose “Policy Perspectives: How the Democrats and Republicans View Foreign Affairs” for my first breakout session. The Republican speaker, John Podhoretz of The New York Post, got to have the first word and the last word on almost every question. Podhoretz insulted the Democratic Party, calling it “schizophrenic” and “weak” because of its division on certain issues, and calling Democratic protests about the Iraq war “inappropriate and dangerous.”

Democratic speaker Simon Rosenberg, president and founder of the New Democratic Network, responded: “Debate, besides being a sign of health in a party, is important to any democracy.” He addressed the “mishandling” of the Iraq war: “The Republican Party only cares about winning the war militarily, which isn’t enough. We need to win culturally as well. We need to win the war and win the peace. The Republicans have won the war, but lost the peace.”

Podhoretz interrupted, saying that the Democrats should have been “loyal and responsible” by supporting the war, instead of “hostile.”

The mealtime plenary sessions taught me the most about the mindset of our country and about the art of rhetoric. Each speaker played upon the audience’s deepest fears and greatest hopes. Even after four days, it never ceased to amaze me how easy it was to get a standing ovation out of the crowd. Even platitudes such as “I believe in democracy” or, even better, “I believe in Israel” had the crowds on their feet. How much political integrity and courage does it take to say “I will defend Israel” to thousands of pro-Israel activists? Flattery seemed to work as well, which acting Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert proved by saying, “Thank God we have AIPAC.”

(Continued...)

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http://www.jewishjournal.com/home/preview.php?id=15634