Pro-Israel PACs: Still Unique

By Richard H. Curtiss

"Something is systemically wrong with Congress today, and it's money, the pursuit of money, the endless pursuit of money, the virtual hourly pursuit of money, either to finance the perpetual campaign or to maintain a certain standard of living."

—Rep. Les AuCoin (D-OR) quoted in the New York Times, June 4, 1989

Final Federal Election Commission returns reveal that 70 active pro-Israel political action committees (PACs) spent $3,870,052 in direct contributions to the campaigns of 453 candidates for the Senate and the House of Representatives in the 1988 elections, This was down from the approximately $4.3 million spent by 60 pro-Israel PACs in 1986 and also by 54 pro-Israel PACs in 1984.

It is not clear whether the 1988 decrease reflects difficulties in raising proIsrael funds, or fewer body contested elections. The Israel lobby will spend huge amounts to help reelect foreign affairs, armed services, appropriations and intelligence committee members judged friendly to Israel, or to punish those perceived to be insufficiently supportive.

Sometimes such heavily funded efforts are successful, as were the 1982 campaign to defeat Representative Paul Findley (R-IL) and the 1984 campaign against Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Charles Percy (R-IL). Others are unsuccessful, as was the 1988 campaign by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAQ to defeat Senator John Chafee (R-RI). One reason that campaign failed was a report by CBS's Sixty Minutes just before the election that AIPAC was illegally coordinating PAC donations to Chafee's opponent, Lt. Gov. Richard Licht. Licht, a long-time fundraiser for United Jewish Appeal, received $168,600 from pro-Israel PACs. Chafee received nothing.

The problem of pro-Israel PACs, at first glance, seems to blend into the nettlesome campaign financing problem as a whole. The total amount contributed directly to candidates by PACs of all persuasions has grown from $55 million contributed in 1980 to $151 million contributed, mostly to incumbents, in 1988. There are several factors, however, that make pro-Israel PACs unique.

The first is their names. Where trade association, company, or public interest PACs generally choose names that identify their purposes, pro-Israel PACs choose names that conceal. Of 121 pro-Israel political action committees incorporated since 1978, only eight mention Israel, Zionism, Judaism, or anything connected to the Middle East in their titles. Of these eight, only two were active in 1988, meaning that 68 other pro-Israel PACs active in 1988 had deceptive names.

The evidence that this is a conscious policy goes back to 1984, when in the space of only a few months some 50 of these political action committees were created with nondescriptive names like Badger PAC, Desert Caucus, Five Towns PAC, Goldcoast PAC, Metro PAC, National PAC and even IcePAC. That year the only active pro-Israel PAC with a descriptive name. Texans for a Sound Middle East Policy suddenly renamed itself Texas PAC.

All this prompted an alert Capitol Hill reporter, Edward Roeder, whose Sunshine News Service publishes "PACs Americana," to draw this admission from Robert Golder, president of Delaware Valley PAC:

"This PAC is a group of American Jewish people working for a stronger American position on Israel ... We see no need to have a specific name, a specific title... I don't know that it's necessary for outsiders to know who we are... It's a small group of Jewish fundraisers raising money from mostly Jewish contributors, and we can explain who we are to them."

A second unique feature is that pro-Israel PACs are virtually unopposed. Arab-American, Muslim-American, Jewish peace activists and US business groups seeking to stimulate trade with Middle East countries have generated over a 12-year period only nine PACs. The only one that has ever made significant donations is the National Association of Arab Americans PAC (NAAA PAC). It contributed $17,350 to candidates in 1984, $49,225 in 1986, and some $25,000 in 1988. Taking $4 million as the normal pro-Israel PAC expenditure and $50,000 as the maximum ever mustered by counter forces, pro-Israel PACs outspend their opposition 80 to 1.

The most significant feature about pro-Israel PACs, however, is their demonstrated ability to coordinate donations. FEC records indicate that the National Association of Realtors PAC spent $3 million in the 1988 elections, PACs established by the teamsters union, the American Medical Association, the National Education Association and the National Association of Federal -Employees each spent between 2 and 3 million dollars, None of these five largest national PACs, however, was able to give more than $5,000 for the primary election and $5,000 for the general election to any one candidate. Nor, by law, can individual donors give more than $1,000 to a candidate.

If, however, 70 pro-Israel PACs active in 1988 coordinated their giving, they could provide whatever a candidate required. Internal AIPAC documents instructing employees to contact named PACs and tell them to give designated amounts to named candidates have fallen into the hands of both the Washington Post and Sixty Minutes. They indicate that coordination involving at least 20 of the major pro-Israel PACs took place in 1988. Such coordination makes AIPAC and those PACs into a single PAC, circumventing the law that limits donations to a single candidate. A group of former US government officials (including the publisher and editor of this magazine) have filed a complaint to this effect with the Federal Elections Commission. AIPAC and the named PACs have formally denied the charges. To date, the FEC has taken no action.

Donations to Democratic candidates ($2,730,324) were twice those to Republicans ($1,139,728), but there was amazing consistency as to which Democrats and which Republicans benefited. For example, $227,800 went to the 1988 campaign of Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) and zero to his Republican opponent, Pete Dawkins, although both competed as to who would be most supportive of Israel. Another example is the $214,000 provided Sen. Howard Metzenbaum (D-OH), who is Jewish and on the intelligence committee, and zero provided to his opponent, Cleveland Mayor George Voinovich.

In cases where the challenger was Jewish and the incumbent was not, but had a pro-Israel record, most pro-Israel PACs supported the incumbent. Sen. Lowell P. Weicker, Jr. (R-CT) received $151,575 from pro-Israel PACs in 1988. His Jewish challenger, Joseph Lieberman, received $16,800.

The pro-Israel PACs that supported Lieberman, who won, did so because he was Jewish. In other cases where pro-Israel PACs have Oven to both sides in the same campaign, the explanation lies in the "multi-issue" Jewish PACs, which support candidates only if they are liberal as well as pro-Israel. Directors of these PACs complain that by supporting any candidate who votes for foreign aid and against arms sales to Arab countries, mainstream pro-Israel PACs are helping politicians of the "religious right," who would turn the US into a nation where Jews would no longer feel comfortable.

Directors of pro-Israel PACs which, like AIPAC, support any elected government of Israel, are unique in another way. They lobby for a foreign power, but do not register as foreign agents on the technicality that their funds are raised in the United States rather than abroad. Yet they accomplish far more for Israel than other foreign countries achieve by employing public relations firms and attorneys to act as their registered American agents.

For example, for every dollar spent by pro-Israel PACs on congressional campaigns, members of Congress vote $750 in direct grant economic aid and military aid to Israel. In any other context this would be described as a kickback, and a particularly costly one to American taxpayers.

Further, pro-Israel PACs reward members of Congress for diverting American jobs abroad. These include not just the thousands of jobs that go to Israel because of special procurement provisions inserted into US defense budgets, but hundreds of thousands that go to Europe or Asia. In 1988 alone, Saudi arms purchases diverted from the US to Britain because of congressional opposition totaled more than $30 billion by US estimates, and $68 billion by Saudi estimates. Since one billion dollars in lost sales costs American workers 40,000 jobs, between 1,200,000 and 2,720,000 American jobs were lost.

The final factor that makes Israel's special interest different from all others is that it puts Americans at odds with people who have no other grievance with the US. Every year some American military personnel, diplomats, businessmen or tourists die, not because of US actions but because the US has become identified with brutal Israeli actions in the Third World.

None of these unique factors deterred 453 congressional candidates from accepting money from pro-Israel PACs in 1988. Perhaps, however, they will deter voters from supporting those same candidates in 1990.