History
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee was founded in 1951 by Isaiah L. "Si" Kenen. Kenen originally ran the American Zionist Committee for Public Affairs as a lobbying division of the American Zionist Council. Before that, Kenen was an employee of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Michael Oren writes in his book, Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East 1776 to the Present, "Though founded in 1953, AIPAC had only now in the mid-70s, achieved the financial and political clout necessary to sway congressional opinion. Confronted with opposition from both houses of Congress, Ford rescinded his 'reassessment.'" George Lenczowski notes a similar, mid-1970s, timeframe for the rise of AIPAC power. "It also coincides with the militant emergence of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) as a major force in shaping American policy toward the Middle East." He further notes that this period also coincides with a major shift in Israeli government policies related to the election of Menachem Begin in Israel.
AIPAC's web site states that it "has grown into a 100,000-member national grass-roots movement."
Read more about this topic: American Israel Public Affairs Committee
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“For a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)
“No cause is left but the most ancient of all, the one, in fact, that from the beginning of our history has determined the very existence of politics, the cause of freedom versus tyranny.”
—Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)
“The myth of independence from the mother is abandoned in mid- life as women learn new routes around the mother—both the mother without and the mother within. A mid-life daughter may reengage with a mother or put new controls on care and set limits to love. But whatever she does, her child’s history is never finished.”
—Terri Apter (20th century)