AIPAC Cancels Staff Vacations in Push To Kill Iran Deal

• AIPAC Cancels Staff Vacations in Push To Kill Iran Deal
  by Ron Kampeas, http://forward.com/  
  (JTA) — Cancel your summer vacations.
  That was the order AIPAC’s executive director, Howard Kohr, gave his employees in a staff meeting convened this week at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee after the United States announced the Iran nuclear deal.
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  With the influential pro-Israel lobby group pushing for Congress to reject the deal negotiated by the Obama administration, it’s all hands on deck. Lay leaders, too, are canceling their summer plans, and AIPAC activists already are calling lawmakers and hitting synagogue listservs with appeals to can the plan.
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  The two months that Congress has to review the deal will feature a pitched battle pitting the Obama administration and backers of the agreement against opponents and the Israeli government.
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  “We’ve regularly engaged with the Jewish community in the context of these negotiations,” a senior White House official told JTA on Thursday. “And now that we have a deal, we feel it’s important to continue and even accelerate this engagement.”
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  Bring it on, deal opponents are saying.
  “We are undertaking a major and significant effort to urge Congress to oppose the deal and insist on a better agreement,” an AIPAC source told JTA.
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  Since the deal was finalized Tuesday, White House officials have blitzed the Jewish community with phone calls and pro-deal talking points. On Thursday, Jewish lawmakers were asked to come to the White House for a briefing.
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  J Street, the liberal Jewish Middle East lobby, which has largely backed President Barack Obama in all his Middle East strategies, raised $2 million to stump for the deal even before it was announced and already has unveiled a TV ad.
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  The group’s president, Jeremy Ben Ami, who routinely bristles when J Street is likened to AIPAC, insisting that they play different fields, on Wednesday embraced a fight with the older and larger lobby. Asked on MSNBC whether he was going “toe to toe” with AIPAC, he said, “Essentially we are.”
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  For his part, AIPAC’s Kohr distributed a phone script on Thursday morning to AIPAC’s tens of thousands of activists directed at members of Congress.
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  “I am calling to urge the senator/representative to oppose the Iran nuclear deal because it will not block Iran from getting a nuclear weapon,” the script says.
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  The Israeli government is sending officials to Washington to campaign against the plan, starting next week with the opposition leader, Zionist Union chief Isaac Herzog – a bid to show the wide breadth of Israeli opposition to the plan.
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  Additionally, according to multiple sources, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made clear to his U.S. counterparts that he will reject all U.S. overtures to discuss additional U.S. defense assistance to offset any expansion of regional Iranian influence until he is certain all avenues to killing the deal are unavailable.
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