This column originally appeared in San Diego Jewish World under the headline “AIPAC disserves Jewish community by closing forum.”
By Donald H. Harrison
You won’t see any news report on San Diego Jewish World about the Iran nuclear pact discussion at Tifereth Israel Synagogue on Wednesday evening, August 5, because it was closed to the media so that attendees “could feel comfortable” discussing their views, according to a spokesman for AIPAC that sponsored the discussion.
On the one hand, we are told by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which is involved in a multimillion-dollar campaign to defeat the P5 +1 agreement with Iran, that this is one of the most important issues facing the American people.
Yet AIPAC decides that you readers — and anyone else who was unable to travel on Wednesday night to the Conservative synagogue in the San Carlos region of San Diego — should not be permitted to read about it.
I don’t know how you will feel, but I believe AIPAC’s attitude is counterproductive.
Instead of limiting information to the hundred or so people who attended the meeting in which Tifereth Israel was joined by Chabad of East County, Temple Emanu-El and Ohr Shalom Synagogue, news coverage could have brought the issues to many more people, all of whom are just as vitally affected as those people who could attend the forum.
We call on AIPAC to explain its policy, to tell the Jewish community and others what they are afraid of. Why do they feel that open discussion, honestly reported, will be harmful to their efforts to inform the public? What don’t they want the general public to know?
This veil of secrecy placed on discussions of public policy can’t help but make people suspicious of AIPAC’s role in this national debate — no matter what might have been said at Wednesday night’s forum.
If, indeed, AIPAC loses the confidence of the American Jewish people by following such policies, it will have only itself to blame.
Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World
