Anti-Israel Groups Protest Netanyahu’s Visit to a Liberal Think-Tank

Anti-Israel Groups Protest Netanyahu’s Visit to a Liberal Think-Tank and Give the Public the Phone Numbers to Call—Israel’s Supporters Can Use Them, Too

By Susan L. Rosenbluth, TheJewishVoiceAndOpinion.com

It isn’t often that Israel’s enemies give supporters of the Jewish State specific tools to act in Israel’s defense, but when it happens, many of Israel’s defenders believe it is incumbent on them to act quickly.

On November 10, the Center for American Policy (CAP), a so-called “policy institute” that makes no bones about its “progressive” agenda geared to changing not only “the conversation, but to change the country,” will host Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at a closed-door session held at the group’s Washington, DC, office.

The fact that Mr. Netanyahu has been invited to walk into CAP’s hallowed halls has outraged the anti-Israel far-left, specifically CodePink (www.codepink.org) and The US Campaign to End the Occupation (www.endtheoccupation.org). Both groups sent out emails to their supporters, first praising CAP, in CodePink’s words, for its “long and proud tradition of providing a venue for progressive thinkers and leaders to exchange ideas that advance peace, equality, and human rights,” and then demonizing Mr. Netanyahu and Israel with the usual libels of “inciting hatred,” “entrenching a brutal status-quo of apartheid,” and “presiding over a terrifying descent into far-right extremist violence.”

The groups then beseeched CAP to rescind the invitation.

“Let’s be real. Netanyahu has no business speaking at CAP,” wrote Josh Ruebner, policy director of End the Occupation.

To make sure CAP got the point, the groups asked their supporters to sign a petition demanding that CAP disinvite Mr. Netanyahu because he is “not progressive.”

The groups announced that they will also be mounting a protest demonstration at CAP against Mr. Netanyahu.

In making their request for signatures, however, the groups gave out CAP’s phone number and the name of its president, Neera Tanden, which means Israel’s supporters can call her and congratulate the group for choosing to hear Israel’s side of the argument from its leader. The phone number is 202-682-1611

The group can also be reached through its website at https://www.americanprogress.org/about/contact-us/.

All in all, inviting Mr. Netanyahu can be seen as a gutsy move on CAP’s part, given its close ties with the Democratic Party, whose members and leaders, especially under President Barack Obama, have been less than favorably disposed towards Israel, to say nothing of the fact that, according to its website, CAP receives somewhere between $500,000 and $1 million from the Embassy of the United Arab Emirates.

While it receives between $50,000 and $100,000 from the Israel Institute, it also receives between $5,000 and $50,000 from the far-left New Israel Fund and a similar sum from the Turkish Confederation of Businessmen and Industrialists.