Jewish activists demand that Biden skip the AIPAC conference

Jewish activists and their supporters descended on Joe Biden’s Philadelphia campaign office this morning to demand that the presidential candidate skip American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s (AIPAC) annual policy conference. The protests come just weeks after the progressive groups MoveOn, Indivisible, and Working Families Party formed a coalition to encourage Democratic candidates to skip the event.
Earlier this week, Democratic frontrunner Bernie Sanders said he would not attend the AIPAC conference and accused the pro-Israel organization  of providing a platform for bigotry. The lobbying group called Sanders’ decision “shameful.” Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren also said she would skip it, but Biden has indicated that he’ll be attending.
“For every decade of his political career, Biden has worked in lockstep with AIPAC,” the progressive, Jewish group IfNotNow declared in a statement, “Together they’ve built a shameful legacy of shielding the Israeli government from consequences and doing nothing to end Israel’s brutal military occupation that strips Palestinians and Israelis of their dignity and freedom.”
IfNotNow has been live-tweeting the events, where a number of activists have been arrested over their civil disobedience.
When we say that we are going to hold Biden and AIPAC accountable for supporting the occupation, we follow through. AIPAC has had a few months. Earlier this year, it had to apologize for a series of Facebook ads comparing Democratic lawmakers to the terror-group ISIS. After that debacle, Minnesota Rep. Betty McCollum referred to the organization as a “hate group.”

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