Following the publication of my column, AIPAC’s moment of decision, in the Jerusalem Post, the organization contacted the Jerusalem Post and insisted that the paper publish the following comment, at the bottom of my column.
“This column makes a completely false accusation about AIPAC’s position,” Wittmann said. “AIPAC’s position has consistently been that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, should remain undivided and we have supported moving the US embassy there – and that remains our position. AIPAC actually worked to strengthen the 2012 Republican platform on Jerusalem. When it was noticed that Jerusalem was omitted from the original draft, we urged that language be included reflecting Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.”
I was hoping, when I received AIPAC’s response that it would include a denial of the charges brought to me by angry Republicans which I reported in my article. But as you see, AIPAC’s statement says absolutely nothing about the content of my article. Rather it includes a boilerplate comment that the group supports an undivided Jerusalem. While officially true, as the article alleges, AIPAC worked through a surrogate, Sue Lynch to strike language from the 2012 Republican platform to delete language calling for just that. The statement does not deny this.
In other words, AIPAC says that by accurately reporting what they did, I falsely represented their position. This is, of course, a nonsensical statement, and a deliberately manipulative one at that.
I am sorry that AIPAC would rather engage in manipulative attacks against me, for accurately reporting events than consider that its behavior indicates that my concerns that it is working to undermine Republican support for Israel, just as J Street undermines Democrat support for Israel are well placed.
For details on precisely what AIPAC representatives did to undermine efforts to strengthen the Republicans’ platform on Israel in 2012, I urge you to read Adam Kredo’s important article on the subject that was published in the Washington Free Beacon, shortly after my column was published.
Here is the link to his article.
http://freebeacon.com/politics/aipac-fought-weaken-pro-israel-language/
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