It is a sign of the changing political times that the March 12 American Israel Public Affairs Committee Washington conference received much more candid journalistic treatment than AIPAC events have ever received. The NY Times March 14 report, �Clinton and Obama Court Jewish Vote,� got right to the point:

�As Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama compete for Jewish donors and voters, Mrs. Clinton is following a tried-and-true rule of hers from New York -- support Israel to the last -- while Mr. Obama is trying a more delicate strategy that hit some bumps this week.�

Clinton never stops pandering to New York�s ultra-right Zionists. In an age when most young educated Jews escape from Judaism and marry gentiles, the �feminist� candidate is constantly in sex-segregated Orthodox Jewish synagogues, telling them of her great love of Israel, which of course comes from her heart, not from their check books. Her same ol� same ol� speech was remarked on, but Obama is the new comet in the Democratic sky and the Times focused on what was different in his �I am pro-Israel� speech.

�Several Jewish conference-goers said they were concerned by Mr. Obama�s remark Sunday in Iowa where . . . he said, �Nobody is suffering more than the Palestinian people.� . . . Obama put the blame on the stalled peace efforts with Israel and on the refusal of the Palestinian government to renounce terrorism.�

Obama represents Illinois, �the land of Lincoln.� But he models himself after the state�s other great philosopher, Al Capone. Chicago�s Mafia leader proclaimed and proved that �kind words and a machine gun will get you more than kind words alone.� Obama has a history of telling Arab-Americans that he �feels the pain� of the Palestinians -- while he supports giving billions in weapons to their oppressors.

The Times coverage of Obama was distinctive for the paper, in giving competition �for Jewish donors and voters� as the purpose of both leading wannabe Democratic candidates. Since Hitler, for good and bad reasons, writing about Jewish political money has been the great �no-no� of America�s capitalist media. In 1991, I interviewed Harold Seneker, editor of the �Forbes 400� issue of the magazine, for an article in the February 11 Nation. I estimated that Jews, about 2.5 percent of Americans, were consistently circa 20 percent of the 400 richest Americans. He wanted to write a story on it. �Its a success, both for the Jews and capitalism.� But publisher Malcolm Forbes wouldn�t let him. He remembered the period after Hitler�s 1933 victory inspired American anti-Semitic propaganda about �Jewish money.� He agreed with Seneker�s thesis, but didn�t want responsibility for even a slight possible rise in anti-Semitism resulting from an article.

The taboo�s negative has been mass media silence about the impact of Zionist money on US domestic and foreign policy since Harry Truman, wanting Jewish campaign contributions, supported Israel�s creation in the run up to the 1948 presidential election. But today many journalists, Jew and gentile, are critical of Israel re the Palestinians, zealotry for Bush staying in Iraq and threats of bombing Iran. For them, not talking about Jewish money means not dealing with capitalist America�s massive political corruption. Thus the March 2 Forward, New York�s prestigious �Jewish community� weekly, had no hesitation in running �How Many, How Much?,� a graph estimating Jews as 24 percent of the current Forbes 400 listing of the �nation�s richest.�

Most Jews aren�t rich. And among the rich, the most famous political donor, George Soros, isn�t a Zionist. The March 23 Forward declared that he just dropped a political bomb of �near-nuclear force� on American Zionism. The billionaire�s article in the post-dated April 12 New York Review of Books argues that the US does Israel a disservice in ritually backing it:

�While other problem areas of the Middle East are freely discussed, criticism of our policies toward Israel is very muted indeed. . . . One explanation is to be found in the pervasive influence of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which strongly affects both the Democratic and the Republican parties. . . . Politicians challenge it at their peril because of the lobby�s ability to influence political contributions.�

He long ago left Judaism behind, but he kept quiet about this because he �did not want to provide fodder to the enemies of Israel.� But now its time for the American Jewish community �to rein in the organization that claims to represent it.�

Soros is a Tory reformist. He funds narcotics law reformers and other worthy issue groups. But the Drug Policy Alliance, which got 30 percent of its funds from Soros, welcomed Republican conventioneers to New York in 2004, even as a massive antiwar march protested against Bush and his party�s war. Now he wants Israel to negotiate with Hamas. �Fortunately Saudi Arabia, whose position is also precarious, has a genuine interest in promoting a settlement based on two states.� He wants the Saudis to lean on Hamas while the US pressures Israel into negotiating itself out of the West Bank and east Jerusalem.

Never mind that Saudi Arabia is a vicious despotism. Ignore US arms to it and Israel. Forget that the American people have absolutely no interest in arming either criminal government. If Soros got his wishes fulfilled, the result would be �Bantustine,� guarded by Israel and America�s Arab satraps.

Many Americans also want Israel to deal with Hamas, concerned for horrific Palestinian living conditions, without sharing the billionaire�s naive imperial mentality. But nuking AIPAC was too much for Obama. His campaign immediately announced that

�Mr. Soros is entitled to his opinions. But on this issue, he and Senator Obama disagree. The US and our allies are right to insist that Hamas -- a terrorist organization dedicated to Israel�s destruction -- meet very basic conditions before being treated as a legitimate actor. AIPAC is one of many voices that share this view.�

Soros is modern proof of Sancho Panza�s proverb. He told Don Quixote that �in this world, the follies of the rich pass for wise sayings,� and Soros gave the Democrats $28 million in 2004, knowing his party to be demagogues pandering after Zionist cash, vainly hoping that they would beat Bush. The March 21 Sun, New York�s Zionist daily, was �right on the money� when it explained Obama�s problem. Even if we presume that he really is troubled by the Palestinians� wretched conditions.

�The Soros article puts Democrats in the awkward position of choosing between Mr. Soros, a major funder of their causes, and the pro-Israel lobby, whose members are also active in campaign fund-raising.�

Soros cash would buy Obama media ads in Democratic primaries. But taking it means AIPAC billionaires buying ads for Clinton. On the other hand, denouncing Soros doesn�t mean him running ads against Obama. And, if he gets nominated, he can reasonably expect Soros to fund him against the Republican. Soros�s guileless reformism has ended him up with less, not more, influence in inner circles of his lesser evil.

Democrats hustling Zionist money reaches surreal proportions. Party leaders rage against Jimmy Carter -- their own ex-president! -- for denouncing Israeli apartheid. Obama distances himself from his party�s biggest funder. But now the party may have to pay a liberal price for its money chasing. Liberal Jews and gentiles see Obama as anti-Iraq war. But many dislike Israeli policies. If antiwar leftists keep the AIPAC/Soros/Obama affair in front of their eyes, Obama dumping on Soros can operate to make them suspicious of their party as a real antiwar lesser evil. It doesn�t take a high tech crystal ball to see Obama�s crisis as our opportunity. If we get our own act together, the antiwar movement can move out of the wings and into the center of America�s political stage.

Soros has more money than educated antiwar Democrats but they don�t have more brains than him. For now, they would still vote for any hawk the Democrats pick in �08, as a lesser evil to any Republican. But if we start an Internet convention, ASAP, to pick a genuine antiwar presidential candidate by the end of 2007, committed to running against the bipartisan hawk-parties, many will sign on as they come to understand that the US military isn�t going to get out of the Middle East, whether the Democrats win or lose.

In 2000 and 2004, they worried that voting for Nader meant electing Bush. But now Democrats run Congress, and they aren�t kicking Bush out of Iraq. Working for a Democratic victory as a lesser antiwar evil is no longer axiomatic for such types. In fact, if a left party came to life and drew enough votes from the Democrats to elect a Republican, every pundit, right to left, would understand this to mean that the antiwar movement was growing in number and determination to end all of America�s wars, once and for all and forever.

Liberals voted Democrat in 1968 and 1972, fantasizing that their party would end the Vietnam war. It lost. But Nixon�s attorney general stared out of the White House at a gigantic march. While most demonstrators were liberal Democrats, he knew the parade was called and organized by Trotskyists, Stalinists, left Black nationalists, unions, pacifists and such: �It looks like the Russian revolution.� Determined Marxist organizing cadre, only a few thousand at most, not Democratic politicians, mobilized the hundreds of thousands that forced �bipartisan� Washington out of Indochina. Nixon read the handwriting on the wall: Get out -- or get more radical explosions at home.

We have a better and worse situation. Bush is losing the confidence of millions of Americans and the Democrats aren�t gaining it. But neither are the divided antiwar demonstrators. Nevertheless, we have the same task in 2007 and forever more: We must build a massive united street movement to get US imperialism out of the Middle East and everywhere else, from now to eternity.

Henceforth, no one can talk intelligently about US Middle Eastern policy without discussing AIPAC, Obama and Soros. We must shout from the rooftops about Zionist campaign contributions. Anti-Semitism is �a fire that has burned itself out� in modern America. It won�t spring up from the ashes if we take care. Lecture audiences laugh when I rhetorically defend our politicians:

�Rich Zionists can�t just walk in on a Democrat and bribe him! No way!! They must sit in his waiting room with all the other bribe-givers until it�s their turn!!!�

US politics is the story of unending corruption since New York�s Tammany Hall and other 19th century political machines, when Jews, rich or poor, were a minuscule percentage of the population, and Zionists were non-existent. We cannot seriously educate the public about the �legalized bribery� of Zionist campaign contributions to the modern Republicratic Washington machine without putting it in its matrix of general grafting. We won�t persuade most Americans to end Zionist buying of our rulers, alone. Nor should we try, when we certainly can mobilize millions who already want abolition of private election contributions, with publicly funded elections taking their place. In context, documented exposure of Zionism�s perfidious role is not only legitimate, it is a perfect educational example of America�s government of the rich, by the rich, for the rich, which must perish from the earth.