Today, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke before the U.S. Congress. Despite once again rebuking the long-standing U.S. policy that Israel should withdraw to the 1967 borders with mutally agreed land swaps, Netanyahu was repeatedly applauded by Members of Congress (even moreso than Obama).

One reason the Israeli government has been able to secure such steady support for its policies, even when they conflict with U.S. policies, is due to the efforts of American Israeli Political Action Committee (AIPAC). AIPAC’s lobbying network is considered one of the nation’s finest, and every year it holds an annual convention in Washington, D.C. that is heavily attended by members of Congress, usually drawing at least half of the members of the Senate, for example.

Over the past few days, ThinkProgress attended the AIPAC conference here in Washington, D.C. We interviewed a number of attendees and asked them what they thought about Netanyahu so publicly rebuking the United States and what they think about progressive Jewish advocates who are more critical of the Israeli government.

Attendees told us that they think it’s best for all Jews to simply back Netanyahu no matter what his policies do to Palestinians or to the state of Israel, that if Israel gave up land it would face genocide like the Native Americans, and some even compared progressive, anti-occupation, pro-Israel Jewish activists to traitors. Watch a video compilation of these remarks:

Thankfully, Americans who want to resolve the Middle East conflict and help establish a just resolution that includes two safe, secure, prosperous, and free Palestinian and Israeli states do not have to support a hardline organization like AIPAC. Groups like J Street, Americans for Peace Now, and Jewish Voice for Peace offer alternatives.

– Zaid Jilani and Ali Gharib

A day before delegates from AIPAC’s annual convention made their way to Capitol Hill to push pieces of pro-Israel legislation, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) re-introduced a bill that would green-light an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear program.

The resolution’s list of 44 co-sponsors — including GOP Reps. Michele Bachmann (MN), Mike Pence (IN) and Allen West (FL) — tracks closely with last summer’s stalled version, which garnered much support among Gohmert’s colleagues in the Tea Party Caucus. Gohmert’s resolution gives Israel support:

to use all means necessary to confront and eliminate nuclear threats posed by the Islamic Republic of Iran, including the use of military force if no other peaceful solution can be found within reasonable time to protect against such an immediate and existential threat to the State of Israel.

This appears to be a concerted effort to usurp President Obama’s prerogative to have sole provenance over making foreign policy. Obama’s preference in this matter seems clear — members of his administration and military leaders have spoken out against an attack — and he’s reportedly expressed his thoughts to Israel.

Speaking at AIPAC yesterday, Israeli national security analyst Amos Harel told the crowd that Joint Chiefs Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen delivered a message to Israel during a February trip there. Harel characterized Mullen’s message as: “You have a clear red light from us right now, not a green light, not a yellow light, but a red light.”

What’s more, the congressional resolution comes at a time when members of Israel’s security establishment — though notably not Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — are dialing down their rhetoric on Iran.

Recently retired Israeli spy chief Meir Dagan, who is not known as a dove, recently said that the notion of Israel attacking Iran was the “stupidest thing (he had) ever heard.” Dagan warned of widespread regional conflagration — a scenario that would likely include attacks on U.S. forces and interests in the Middle East. His comments caused a flap in Israel and were subsequently defended by several other former heads of Israeli security agencies, some of whom backed his views on attacking the Islamic Republic.

Today, during his speech to a joint meeting of Congress, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu congratulated himself for “publicly” committing Israel to the creation of a Palestinian state (with caveats) two years ago. He said it wasn’t easy, because it required giving up Jewish lands in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank), which he claimed is not currently under occupation:

Two years ago, I publicly committed to a solution of two states for two peoples: A Palestinian state alongside a Jewish state.

I am willing to make painful compromises to achieve this historic peace. As the leader of Israel, it is my responsibility to lead my people to peace. Now, this is not easy for me. It’s not easy because I recognize that in a genuine peace, we will be required to give up parts of the ancestral Jewish homeland. You have to understand this, in Judea and Samaria, the Jewish people are not foreign occupiers.

The West Bank is indeed under Israeli occupation. In fact, the West Bank is considered occupied territory under international law, something even former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon acknowledged in 2003. “You cannot like the word, but what is happening is an occupation — to hold 3.5 million Palestinians under occupation. I believe that is a terrible thing for Israel and for the Palestinians,” he said. And as Media Matters recently noted, even President Bush considers the West Bank to be under Israeli occupation. Yet, seconds after Netanyahu said “the Jewish people are not foreign occupiers” of the West Bank, the U.S. Congress erupted with a rousing standing ovation. Watch it:

“Virtually the entire US Congress is reflexively applauding everything a foreign leader says — no matter how controversial,” one observer on Twitter noted. Indeed, Herb Keinon at the Jerusalem Post noticed a similar trend during Netanyau’s speech:

Netanyahu could only dream of such a reception in Israel. Even his wife, Sarah, received a standing ovation when she entered the hall. The prime minister was applauded some 30 times, many of those accompanied by standing ovations.

It’s one thing for members of Congress to applaud foreign leaders, but it’s entirely another when they praise statements that are not based in fact, U.S. foreign policy or international law.

Cross-posted at the Wonk Room.

Today, during his speech to a joint meeting of Congress, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu congratulated himself for “publicly” committing Israel to the creation of a Palestinian state (with caveats) two years ago. He said it wasn’t easy, because it required giving up Jewish lands in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank), which he claimed is not currently under occupation:

Two years ago, I publicly committed to a solution of two states for two peoples: A Palestinian state alongside a Jewish state.

I am willing to make painful compromises to achieve this historic peace. As the leader of Israel, it is my responsibility to lead my people to peace. Now, this is not easy for me. It’s not easy because I recognize that in a genuine peace, we will be required to give up parts of the ancestral Jewish homeland. You have to understand this, in Judea and Samaria, the Jewish people are not foreign occupiers.

The West Bank is indeed under Israeli occupation. In fact, the West Bank is considered occupied territory under international law, something even former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon acknowledged in 2003. “You cannot like the word, but what is happening is an occupation — to hold 3.5 million Palestinians under occupation. I believe that is a terrible thing for Israel and for the Palestinians,” he said. And as Media Matters recently noted, even President Bush considers the West Bank to be under Israeli occupation. Yet, seconds after Netanyahu said “the Jewish people are not foreign occupiers” of the West Bank, the U.S. Congress erupted with a rousing standing ovation. Watch it:

“Virtually the entire US Congress is reflexively applauding everything a foreign leader says — no matter how controversial,” one observer on Twitter noted. Indeed, Herb Keinon at the Jerusalem Post noticed a similar trend during Netanyau’s speech:

Netanyahu could only dream of such a reception in Israel. Even his wife, Sarah, received a standing ovation when she entered the hall. The prime minister was applauded some 30 times, many of those accompanied by standing ovations.

It’s one thing for members of Congress to applaud foreign leaders, but it’s entirely another when they praise statements that are not based in fact, U.S. foreign policy or international law.

Earlier this week, longtime hawk Rep. Geoff Davis (R-KY) appeared on a local news station to talk foreign policy. While the conversation focused on Libya, at one point Davis pivoted and compared America’s recent military engagement against Muammar Gaddafi to President Bush’s quagmire in Iraq. Davis said the decision to go to war in Iraq was a “mistake” and a “gross error” based on “bad information.” He said he was glad troops are beginning to draw down in Iraq, and claimed that the open-ended commitment in that country should not be repeated in Libya:

HOST: How is that any different than getting into Iraq?

DAVIS: We could talk at length about the issues in Iraq but I think we should learn from our mistakes and not repeat them. That’s a gross error in my mind. Now we’re –

HOST: Going into Iraq was a gross error?

DAVIS: I think that in retrospect that was not the best choice for the use of U.S. forces. Every senior commander that I have talked to, particularly those who commanded in the pre-run up to the war, folks on the National Security Council, there was bad information. Many countries believed that bad information. But I think at the end of the day, at least we’ve managed to right a very difficult situation as best we could and we’re drawing down from that. But why would we want to initiate hostilities when the commitment for not being open-ended, being short-termed and focused, has already been broken by an administration whose candidate ran for election based on immediate pull out from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Watch it:

Davis’ frank words about the failures of the Iraq war — spoken almost nonchalantly — amount to a 180 degree turn from his previous rhetoric. While his new stance is commendable, for nearly a decade, Davis was one of the loudest boosters of open-ended military commitments, going out of his way to demonize opponents of the war as unpatriotic and un-American. As reported by Kentucky blogger Joe Sonka, Davis won his seat in Congress in 2004 and 2006 largely on a campaign that promised he would be an unflinching, unquestioning supporter of Bush’s war in Iraq and that his opponents were helping terrorists.

Sonka has two posts recalling Davis’ political career as a cheerleader for the Iraq war. He highlights Davis’ personal attacks on late Rep. Jack Murtha (D-PA), a conservative Democrat who gained national headlines for opposing the war, as well as Davis’ repeated smears against journalists who reported critically on the war (Davis called them “despicable, dishonorable, uninformed, unhistorical, anti-intellectual and, frankly, un-American”).

It is laudable that Davis has finally embraced reality and disavowed the disastrous war in Iraq. However, it is unfortunate that this turnabout did not result directly from revelations of torture, prisoner abuse, tens, if not hundreds of thousands of innocent deaths, mass suffering of civilians starved of food, water, or medical attention, thousands of American casualties, billions in taxpayer money, rampant contractor abuse, and fraud or any of the other painful consequences of the war. Rather, Davis’ pivot came as a political point to rebuke a Democratic president’s efforts in Libya as hypocritical.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) told an audience at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) on Sunday that Palestinian culture is “infused with resentment and hatred” and that this culture “underlies the Palestinians’ and the broader Arab world’s refusal to accept Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state.” Watch it:

But polling data from the last year suggests quite the opposite and should cast serious doubts on the factual basis for Cantor’s broad generalizations about Palestinians and the Arab world.

49 percent of Palestinians supported the recognition of a Jewish state while 48 percent would oppose such a move, according to a poll released at the end of 2010 by the Harry S. Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research in Ramallah.

Further contradicting Cantor’s broad characterizations of the Arab world’s refusal to accept Israel’s right to exist, results from the 2010 Brookings and Zogby poll [pdf] on Arab public opinion found that 86 percent of the Arab world would accept peace with Israel along 1967 lines (an increase of 13 percent over the 2009 poll). Only 12 percent of respondents believed that, in the case of a return to 1967 borders, “Arabs should continue to fight.”

Cantor’s factually challenged comments about Arab and Palestinian views of the peace process were warmly received by the AIPAC crowd which applauded his characterization. But the facts simply don’t support his assertions. An examination of the polling data on Arabs and Palestinians could raise serious questions about Cantor’s intellectual honesty in presenting a provably false narrative which promotes negative stereotypes about Arabs and Palestinians.

Right wingers in the U.S. and Israel, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, freaked out last week when President Obama said in his Middle East speech that Israel’s 1967 borders, with land swaps, should be the basis for a two-state peace deal between the Israelis and the Palestinians. It has been well documented that the President was simply putting words to long-standing U.S. policy. Yet Obama’s opponents have tried very hard to paint the President as anti-Israel because of it.

Eliot Spitzer confronted former AIPAC official Steven Rosen with this fact last night on CNN. Yet Rosen was unwilling to accept that the 1967 borders with land swaps has been U.S. policy for years and repeatedly changed the subject or said “it was new” when Spitzer pressed:

SPITZER: Did the prime minister ignore much of what the president said, President Obama said that was good for Israel? And was he getting upset with the phrasing that actually articulated what U.S. policy has been for a number of years? Quickly give me your view on that.

ROSEN: Netanyahu thank the president for many of the positive elements in the speech. So I don’t think really there’s any question about that. But the president anticipated Israeli unhappiness. In fact, his advisers were divided. You had the secretary of state on one side and you had the national security adviser, Tom Donilon, on the other side exactly because –

SPITZER: OK. But that’s not responsive to the question. The question was not whether anybody was upset. [...] So Steven, tell me, isn’t that, hasn’t that been the essence regardless of who said it, hasn’t that been the core of the policy for years?

ROSEN: I think you’re leaving aside that it was the Palestinians who wanted the president to say this and the Israelis who in advance asked him not to.

“Let me try this once again,” an exasperated Spitzer said. But all Rosen could muster was that it “was a new policy.” Watch it:

Once again, this is not “a new policy.” As Andrew Sullivan pointed out yesterday, Netanyahu himself, along with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, issued a joint statement last November with Clinton iterating the exact same policy Obama talked about last week:

The Prime Minister and the Secretary agreed on the importance of continuing direct negotiations to achieve our goals. The Secretary reiterated that “the United States believes that through good-faith negotiations, the parties can mutually agree on an outcome which ends the conflict and reconciles the Palestinian goal of an independent and viable state, based on the 1967 lines, with agreed swaps, and the Israeli goal of a Jewish state with secure and recognized borders that reflect subsequent developments and meet Israeli security requirements.”

“Netanyahu and Clinton discussed precisely the same proposal that Obama laid out in his speech — and there was no outcry of any kind,” The American Prospect’s Adam Serwer noted, adding, “This reveals all the faux-outrage for what it is: Pure political opportunism.”