Michael J. Sacks’ op-ed “Why I support AIPAC and a big tent Democratic Party” (March 24) provoked my interest as an American Jew who has never supported the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Sacks says that he was an AIPAC supporter from the late 1980s to 2017. He writes that he “stepped away over the organization’s opposition” to Barack Obama’s Iran nuclear deal, but Hamas’ attack on Israeli noncombatants on Oct. 7, 2023, moved him to reengage with AIPAC.

“In the immediate wake of Hamas’ terror attack, even before Israel responded, I watched anti-Israel sentiment accelerate within my party, including in Illinois,” he writes. Even before Israel responded? Wasn’t Israel already engaged in Gaza? Wasn’t Israel already blockading Gaza? Wasn’t Israel already systematically denying medical, food and fuel relief headed to Gaza?

The Hamas attack on Oct. 7 was an unequivocal violation of international law barring attacks on noncombatants. The Israeli settlements established on occupied territory in the West Bank are also violations of international law. The first settlement on occupied Palestinian territory was established almost immediately after Israel’s victory in the Six-Day War in 1967. Now, 50 years later, about 750,000 Israeli settlers live illegally in the West Bank, according to Amnesty International.

Does it really make sense to condemn Hamas for its illegal behavior and not condemn a half-century of Israeli appropriation of occupied territory?

Sacks writes: “So I reached out to AIPAC asking how I could help ensure we didn’t send more people to Congress from Chicago who would deny Israel access to even essential defensive weapons.”

But Israel is by far the largest recipient of military and economic aid since 1946, the total exceeding $300 billion. No Middle Eastern country with a military can compete with Israel’s military. Bolstered by a vastly superior air force and hard-to-overwhelm missile defenses, Israel is more than a match for its enemies, even Iran, and will remain so for a decade or more. U.S. aid to Israel paid for all that; it paid to establish a near-permanent Israeli tactical advantage no matter how Chicago’s representatives in Congress vote.

Antisemitism is a cruel and lethal hatred. Condemning Israel for its treatment of Palestinian dreams and aspirations is a rational choice. Opposing AIPAC, which has lobbied for increasing U.S. aid to Israel for more than 70 years, is also a rational choice.

The question for Sacks and other AIPAC supporters is: How is continuing support for an organization that routinely conflates opposition to Israeli policy with antisemitism going to get to peace in the Middle East or combat antisemitism in the U.S.?

— Jeff Epton, Chicago

Dems’ support for Israel

Thank you for Michael J. Sacks’ op-ed expressing pride in having always supported Israel. Indeed, it should be unthinkable for any Democrat not to support Israel.

Israel is the Middle East’s only democracy and the region’s only country that protects the rights of women, LGBTQ+ people, and ethnic and religious minorities. While Arab states from Morocco to Egypt to Iraq forced some 850,000 Jews to flee following Israel’s rebirth in 1948, Israel’s Arab population has grown from 150,000 in 1948 to over 2 million today. And like all Israeli citizens, they vote, serve in Israel’s parliament and on its Supreme Court, and work as doctors, lawyers, pharmacists, engineers, judges and academics.

Zionism is an indigenous rights movement — Israel is the ancestral home of the Jewish people, who have returned after enduring 2,000 years as a scattered and oppressed minority. The leading lights of the American Civil Rights Movement, including the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks and Rep. John Lewis, proudly identified as supporters of Israel.

Sadly, Israel has never known a day of peace. Its neighbors attempted wars of annihilation in 1948, 1967 and 1973. Israel prevailed and traded land captured in self-defense in 1967 for peace with Egypt in 1979, but its similar land-for-peace offers for a two-state solution were rejected by the Palestinians in 2000, 2001, 2008 and 2012 and were responded to with terrorism, including Hamas’ suicide-bomb massacres of Israelis in the early 2000s.

In 2005, Israel withdrew every soldier and settler from Gaza and turned it over to the Palestinians living there. Sadly, a year later, Gazans voted to empower Hamas, a terrorist organization whose charter vows to “obliterate” Israel, beginning two decades of unrelenting terrorism.

On Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terrorists from Gaza invaded the Jewish state and raped, kidnapped and slaughtered Israelis in a massacre that evoked the horrors of the Holocaust. Israel and its supporters have every right to ensure that this can never happen again.

— Stephen A. Silver, San Francisco

Fighting our own prejudice

Michael J. Sacks claims that opposition to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee is thinly veiled antisemitism, meant “to chase Jews and their allies out of (the Democratic Party’s) big tent coalition.” As a millennial Jewish woman who supports progressive candidates, this attitude feels stale and disconnected from the current political moment.

There is a difference between real and perceived antisemitism, but it can be hard to distinguish, especially for those of us who grew up with the generational trauma of the Holocaust. I’ve caught myself feeling anxious around protesters wearing a keffiyeh or sporting watermelons, wondering if they hate Jews or if they would harass me for wearing my Star of David. But I also recognize that I’ve been conditioned by people like Sacks, AIPAC and Zionism in general to see danger in these symbols, instead of solidarity with the oppressed, just as they’re also trying to condition Americans into being “pro-Israel’’ or else be a dog whistle antisemite.

Jews must fight our own prejudice — not only is it the right thing to do, but it’s the only thing that will keep us safe as Jews. Doing as Sacks suggests and throwing our lot in with AIPAC and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will plant us firmly on the wrong side of history; it only contributes to the mounting antisemitism throughout the world. It’s not Hamas that makes me afraid to wear my Star of David. I’m afraid of being mistaken as an Israel apologist.

Similarly, opposition among voters to AIPAC likely has less to do with actual antisemitism and more to do with the fact that President Donald Trump, at the bequest of the Israeli government, launched a foolish, unpopular war against Iran in the weeks leading up to the primary after supplying Israel with weapons used to wage genocidal war against innocent Palestinians, causing one of the greatest humanitarian crises of our lifetime.

The idea that these enormities wouldn’t have negative electoral ramifications is mystifying.

In fact, Israel’s actions — such as a total blockade in Gaza that left people to starve to death — have knowingly and systematically stalled all progress toward a two-state solution, which Sacks and AIPAC say they support. If peace is your ultimate goal, war cannot be your methodology.

If Sacks’ big tent doesn’t have room for Democrats like me who are horrified by Israel’s current government and who don’t want our tax dollars supporting their wars, then he should use his immense wealth and influence to build a bigger tent or, better yet, take a hike.

— Isabelle Dienstag, Chicago

Influence of biggest donors

Michael J. Sacks wants you to believe what’s happening in Democratic politics is about creating a “big tent.” It’s not. It’s about shutting out voices that challenge the dark money protecting people like him.

In his op-ed, he defends the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and dismisses criticism as a purity test. But in Illinois, this wasn’t really about policy; it was about power and money. What we experienced in the March 17 Democratic primary was a flood of money — Sacks’ money included — designed to drown out voters and buy influence.

I know, because I lived it.

In Illinois’ 6th State Senate District, a super political action committee that Sacks helped fund dropped thousands of dollars to prop up a 30-year incumbent. That came on top of hundreds of thousands more, from a DraftKings-funded super PAC, the Illinois Senate Democrats, the Democratic Party of Illinois, and contributions from corporations such as Ameren, Peoples Gas, DaVita and AstraZeneca.

This isn’t grassroots support. This is a system built to protect a political class that answers to donors, not our neighbors.

And then Sacks calls that approach “pragmatic.”

I’m a pragmatic progressive. I believe in universal health care so no one goes bankrupt getting sick. I believe in challenging companies that price-gouge home insurance policies and prescription drugs. I believe we must build more housing so people can afford to stay in the communities we all love. I believe in raising the minimum wage — and ending the subminimum wage that keeps too many service workers from building any wealth.

Let’s be honest. Billionaires like Sacks are buying our elections from the ground up: from the General Assembly to members of Congress. Their money bankrolls misleading mailers and digital ads that distort the truth faster than any grassroots campaign can respond — even when we knock on 80,000 doors.

This isn’t about AIPAC or foreign policy. It’s about whether billionaires get to dictate our elections. If we keep allowing this, nothing will change, no matter how hard people organize or how many doors we knock on.

If you want a better future, stop following the people who write the biggest checks. Fight back. Talk to your neighbors. Elect Democrats with a backbone who will actually stand up to them — and who actually care about the people they serve.

— Nick Uniejewski, former Illinois Senate candidate, Chicago

Sacks’ support of Israel

The only honest thing in the op-ed by Michael J. Sacks was that he admitted to being a Sacks. Zionists try to cover up for their support of Israel’s government by saying, “I don’t agree with everything the current government does.”

What about Israel does Sacks support?

Israel is a free country; it is free to create its own policies. What Sacks doesn’t get is that by financing and diplomatically supporting Israel, our country makes the crimes of the Israeli government possible, which stains America’s reputation in the world and drains our Treasury.

Sacks says we should finance the defense of Israel. The jets we sent to Israel for its defense are used to bomb its neighbors and unprotected civilians. Did he notice how these defensive weapons started a war with Iran?

Sacks says support of Israel shouldn’t be the main question in the election. Why doesn’t he ask the voters when they’re filling up their gas tanks?

Sacks claims to be a Democrat, but according to his op-ed, he seems to have more in common with Donald Trump Republicans.

— Robert Melick, Round Lake Park

Peace through strength?

Peace though strength is a fallacy. History has demonstrated this time and again. Jesus Christ was born during the Roman Empire. But was the whole world at peace or was it domination? There were rebellions, insurrections and an Appian Way lined with crucifixions. This was peace?

1700s England had the strongest navy and military might of the Western world. Strength. But England’s strength could not stop 13 American Colonies from a revolution. Adolf Hitler’s Nazis and the strength of the Schutzstaffel did not stop Germany from losing World War II.

Peace does not come from strength. Peace is achieved by respect, dialogue, tolerance and cooperation. The current European Union demonstrates this. None of the EU countries feel threatened by the others, and among them, this is peace.

I fear that the U.S. is not looking to achieve true peace. That will not be achieved with our current focus on military strength and power as well as economic domination — only an uneasy peace, until toppled by resistance and rebellion, as all the great empires have been in the past.

We must live up to our True North: All people are created equal and endowed with the inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. If we work to extend that to people everywhere with compassion, understanding and tolerance, peace will be achieved, and all with prosper.

— Joan C. Mikol, Portage, Indiana

Pay TSA agents properly

I travel through airports; my husband travels through airports; both of our daughters travel through airports. We travel statewide, for business, for pleasure; we fly internationally. Never have we been met by anything other than polite, trained, efficient Transportation Security Administration agents at every airport, at every station.

They do the day-to-day work of keeping our air travel safe by checking identification, monitoring luggage and calming anxious travelers of every ethnicity. Day in, day out, for a grossly underpaid starting salary of $34,400 per year.

Compare that to Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. They are undertrained. They inspire fear and trepidation just by their appearance. Let’s not forget that ICE agents also have killed people. They are vastly overpaid when compared to the work of TSA agents.

The solution should be a matter of simple accounting. TSA and ICE each receive funding through the Department of Homeland Security. DHS was given an increase in its funding allotment by President Donald Trump and the Republican-dominated Congress. Now, all DHS has to do is take the bloated budget of ICE and shift it over to TSA. DHS could actually engender a little goodwill by paying those people who actually do the work in maintaining safe and smooth operating airports.

See, politicians. The solution is quite simple. Do your jobs so TSA can do their jobs.

And, while you are at it, pay TSA a living wage.

— Patricia Kluzik Stauch, Elgin

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