The decision by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the pro-Israel lobby in the United States, to back President Barack Obama’s decision to attack Syria brings to mind the story of a Jewish slave who put rotten fish on his king’s plate. The king, furious, orders the slave to pick one of three punishments: eating all the smelly fish, getting 50 lashes or being run out of town. Lashes will hurt, the poor man tells himself; being expelled from town is too harsh a sentence. I’m better off eating the bad fish, he decides. With his stomach straining from the fish, the slave stops eating and asks to exchange that punishment for a whipping instead. After taking a hefty number of lashes, the poor man begs again to change his mind and this time leave town. Thus, instead of making a wise choice at the start, the slave eats the putrid fish, gets whipped and is kicked out of town.  

AIPAC came in for criticism from members of Congress, among them Republican lawmakers who are ardent supporters of the lobby but strenuously opposed to the president’s stand. It was branded, once again, in American (and Jewish) public opinion, as a war-mongering organization and a minority that puts the interests of a foreign country over those of the United States. It was then caught with its pants down when it became known that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu supports the [US-Russian] agreement on Syria.

Abe Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, an organization that also backed Obama’s position, explained in an interview with Israeli Army Radio, “In the same way that Secretary [of State John] Kerry and senior Obama administration officials asked for our help in advancing the peace process, so they asked for support about a strike on Syria.” On that date [Sept. 9], it still appeared that Netanyahu, too, was in favor of such a strike.  

Seems like a simple formula — administrations ask, Jewish organizations support. But what would have been the position of these organizations had Netanyahu preferred to have Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, “the devil you know,” remain in control of Syria rather than risk an al-Qaeda takeover (which was the official Israeli position for the first year of the war)? In that case, would they still have supported Obama’s stance on attacking Syria? A reminder: When the administration asked Foxman and his friends to support Obama in imposing a settlement freeze on Netanyahu’s government to advance the “peace process,” the diligent activists used all their power and money to foil such a move.