Orit Arfa of The Jewish Journal has a nice summary of the AIPAC conference. The concluding paragraph of her report captured a remarkable observation by Rabbi Ed Feinstein:
[W]hile much of the conference was overshadowed by the Obama drama, for Feinstein the symbolic significance of the conference is what is most important.
“If you know Jewish history and you know the history of Israel [and] Zionism, and you realize the first Zionist Congress in 1897 had 204 delegates — there are 10,000 people here today. And you know during the second world war how difficult it was for American Jewish leaders to get the attention of the American government to rescue Jews — this was a miracle.”
Two-thirds of both the House and Senate attended the AIPAC dinner Monday night. It took AIPAC officials, announcing their names in rapid-fire sequence, 25 minutes to complete the “roll call.” My Contentions post about the dinner is here.
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