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Friday, May 27, 2005
New York Times Publishes CNI Foundation Ad
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
New York Times Publishes CNI Foundation Ad
Washington, DC (May 27, 2005) - The Council for the National Interest Foundation (CNIF) placed a full-page advertisement, titled AIPAC's Agenda is Not America's, in today's edition of the New York Times. The ad calls for AIPAC to be registered under a proposed Foreign Lobby Registration Act (FLORA), which CNIF will be drafting and promoting this year. Such an act would require all lobbies that work on behalf of a foreign power to register and make their operations more transparent and reveal their source of funds and activities.
We have been thrilled by the hundreds of calls and emails that we have received today in support of our advertisement. The full text of the ad is included below and a Adobe Acrobat (PDF) version of the ad can be seen at our website: http://www.cnionline.org/pubs/ads/AIPACs-Agenda.pdf
Download the Adobe Acrobat Reader here (http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html) to view the ad as it appears in the newspaper.
Please circulate copies of the ad to your friends. The CNI Foundation will send out a full-page copy of the ad in our next monthly newsletter. If you would like to receive CNIF's monthly newsletters, which include current information on Israel, Palestine, and the Middle East and analysis of the current state of the Middle East peace process, please send us your address and contact information by email at inform@cnionline.org or call us at 800-296-6958.
The ad ran in all regions of the country except the New York and Philadelphia metropolitan areas and appears on page A5 in the main news section of the paper. The same advertisement appeared in the Tuesday, May 24th, edition of the Washington Times, during the AIPAC annual policy conference, where the paper was distributed to attendees by a CNI Foundation employee.
If you would like to see a second CNI Foundation ad appear in the New York Times in the near future, please consider making a tax-deductible donation to the CNI Foundation today. You can make a credit card donation by clicking on the Groundspring donation link below and clicking the box that says "Second New York Times Ad". You can make a tax-deductible donation by check by mailing a check with "New NYT Ad" in the note section to the address below.
CNI Foundation
1250 4th Street SW
Suite WG-1
Washington, DC 20024
We are encouraging the thousands of CNI Foundation contributors accross the country to place this and other CNI Foundation advertisements locally. Please call us or email us for further information.
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AIPAC's AGENDA IS NOT AMERICA'S
Join the campaign to contain and constrain the Israel lobby, especially the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), and its allies, including Christian Zionists.
The top priority for Middle East peace is to contain the overwhelming influence on U.S. Middle East policy by the right-wing government of Israel.
Almost every nation is perplexed at American permissiveness towards Israel, which has resulted in a nation without borders and policies without common sense.
"Doing work as a lobbyist, I often think: What would the Israelis want me to do - so, where is the line between being a pro-Israel lobbyist and representing the wishes of somebody else? I don't know where that line is. . . . When does [our work] change from being a cheerleader to being a client?"
- Senior staffer with a major American Jewish group (The Forward, May 13, 2005)
Until Israel defines itself and becomes a good neighbor to the Palestinians and Syrians, the issue of failed Middle East peace efforts will continue to metastasize terror around the world.
The Debate We Are Missing
The Israel lobby is out of control. It shuts down any rational debate or even any discussion of Israel's actions. Three past heads of Israel's security service, Shin Bet, have said that the actions of the present Israeli government are self-destructive, yet those views are not heard by the American public.
The many organizations that make up the Israel lobby include several whose main effort is to intimidate editors and producers in the media and prevent an open discourse about Israeli policies and our uncritical support for those policies.
What Is Good for Israel Is Not Always Good for America
The agenda of AIPAC and of the Israel lobby has never been the agenda of America in the Middle East. The present government of Israel is undermining long-term American interests and the war on terror. Even the half-step of disengagement from Gaza and a few of the Jewish colonies on the West Bank is not what Palestinians and a majority of peace-seeking Israelis have dreamed of and struggled for.
"We have one advantage over other organizations - we only have to promote the state of Israel."
- Former AIPAC Executive Director Thomas Dine, speaking at an AIPAC conference
Israel, Stop Spying on America!
The close relationship of the Israeli lobby with the embassy of Israel and its right-wing government has created conditions for widespread espionage that has undermined the formation of credible policies for the United States in the Middle East.
Our national security has been breached and incidents have continued almost up to this day.
Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger said that he could not "conceive of a greater harm to national security than that caused by" Jonathan Jay Pollard, a Naval Intelligence officer currently serving a life sentence for selling a roomful of classified documents to Israel.
Now we have another break in American intelligence, this one resulting in the arrest of a mid-level Defense Department analyst, Larry Franklin. The case directly involves high-ranking AIPAC officials, Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman. AIPAC vigorously defended both men for months before firing them to preserve AIPAC's credibility with their contributors and with members of Congress. Franklin is accused of passing classified information on to the AIPAC officials, who in turn called the Israeli embassy and a reporter at the Washington Post. Franklin approached AIPAC because he wanted them to influence President George W. Bush.
Promoting the agenda of the government of Israel, even using U.S. classified information to do so, has been one basic strategy of the Israel lobby.
The Lobby Reveals Itself
Lobby spokespersons are quite brazen in describing how they operate:
"It is routine for us to say: This is our policy on a certain issue, but we must check what the Israelis think."
- Activist with a major American Jewish group, The Forward (May 13, 2005)
And they like to work in the dark:
"A lobby is like a night flower: It thrives in the dark and dies in the sun."
- Steve Rosen, recently fired AIPAC policy director, in an internal AIPAC memo, cited Jerusalem Post, August 24, 2004
Three Israeli generals are on the program for AIPAC's annual policy conference this week, but not a single American in uniform is there. If an American goal in invading Iraq was to ensure Israeli security, then why didn't AIPAC honor one of the wounded Americans instead of three Israeli generals?
New Legislation is Needed
Join the campaign to support legislation that will apply to all lobbies working on behalf of foreign governments. We propose a Foreign Lobby Registration Act (FLORA), an act designed to make lobbies supporting foreign governments more transparent and accountable to the American people. It will also make clear that those lobbies do not work on behalf of American interests but, in fact, work to support the narrow interests of a foreign government.
More than 60% of American voters according to a Zogby International poll believe AIPAC should be registered as the agent of a foreign government. If implemented under a FLORA, this would mean transparency in resources used by AIPAC dedicated to furthering the right-wing government of Israel. Contributors would have to be publicly listed. It would also put an end to the undeserved tax-exempt status that some foreign lobbies enjoy.
We are joining with other organizations and individuals, including former congressmen, to promote such legislation this year.
The Council for the National Interest Foundation (CNIF) is a 501 (c) (3) tax-exempt organization that works to promote a rational and even-handed Middle East policy in the long-term interest of America, Israel, and the Arab states. It was founded fifteen years ago by former Congressmen Paul Findley (R-Illinois) and Paul "Pete" McCloskey (R-California) and its vice chairman is former Senator James Abourezk (D-South Dakota). We hold Capitol Hill hearings on the Middle East peace process and American policy towards the entire region. See our websites or call us at 800-296-6958.
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To make a tax-deductible contribution to the Council for the National Interest Foundation click here:
https://secure.groundspring.org/dn/index.php?aid=2836
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Council for the National Interest Foundation
1250 4th Street SW, Suite WG-1
Washington, District of Columbia 20024
http://www.cnionline.org/
http://www.rescuemideastpolicy.com/
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