[Got an anonymous confession or rant you just have to share with the world? Submit it to I, Anonymous HERE!—eds]
“She has changed, you know?” the gentleman offered – a soft-spoken, bookish sort: melancholy eyes, tweed jacket. Just my kind of fellow! By ‘she’ he meant our US Rep, Maxine Dexter. He likely approached because of my “M. DEXTER / AGENT OF / ISRAEL” sign.
The “changed” referred to Dexter’s vote to stop selling weapons to Israel. I agreed that was new and positive. We also agreed that Dexter was elected with AIPAC money. The fellow then opined that “AIPAC got a bad deal with Dexter.”
We cannot know if “AIPAC got a bad deal” because we cannot know what Jayapal would be doing in her stead. We do know that Dexter was silent on genocide for her first eight months in office. Jayapal meanwhile risked her political career for Palestinian dignity.
Eight months of silence has cash value: time is territory and silence is complicity. The US provided 7 billion dollars to Israel during Dexter’s genocidal laryngitis – over a thousand times what Israel paid.
We cannot know if “AIPAC got a bad deal” because of the damage caused to US democracy. Dexter won for one reason: AIPAC spent 3.2 million dollars for a racist smear campaign against Jayapal. Senator Merkley called the ads “despicable and damaging to our democracy.” “Despicable” because they invoked fear. “Damaging to our democracy” because fear isolates us, and the isolated person is powerless.
Finally, a “bad deal” implies a ratio. The six million dollars to install Dexter is not much for AIPAC’s billionaires. Jan Koun is an AIPAC supporter and worth over twenty billion dollars. As a ratio of net worth, six million to Koun’s twenty billion is just $75 to the average American.
The conjecture “AIPAC got a bad deal” is rejected: Dexter’s complicity expanded Israel’s occupation; AIPAC’s costs were low; and we just can’t know what a second Jayapal in Congress might have wrought.
The gentleman was impervious: “But she just voted to end military aid to Israel!”
I scoffed: “Yes, and Netanyahu just signed a peace treaty.”—Anonymous