When you’re already the biggest stealth lobby of any foreign government, respecting the law just doesn’t pay. Many lobbyists work aggressively to get their way on Capitol Hill by bundling donor contributions, passing inside information that lawmakers can profit from before ordinary investors and creating a favor bank. Some of those activities are unethical, but surprisingly few are actually illegal.
AIPAC tactics fall into a different category. The lobbying group never bothered to incorporate until its parent organization was ordered to register as an Israeli foreign agent in 1962. AIPAC hurriedly spilt off and quietly incorporated just six weeks later in order to continue the public (and secret) work of its defunct parent organization the AZC. AIPAC flouts U.S. laws for its foreign patron�the government of Israel�when the stakes are high enough. If other lobbies tried any of these tactics, their executives would go to jail. Unsurprisingly, few domestic American causes require spying, smearing and fixing elections. More worryingly, AIPAC now has enough elected and political appointee friends placed in high places, along with establishment media power�that warranted investigations are quickly quashed.
The following five “dirty tricks” are undoubtedly being carefully considered by any Congressmember thinking of voting against AIPAC’s drive to entangle the U.S. in wars against Syria and Iran: More