Mr. Pipes Going to Ackerman’s Committee
Last month I had a post wondering out loud about what it would mean to have Rep. Gary Ackerman — a staunch supporter of Israel who also has backed U.S. support for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas — chairing the House’s Middle East subcommittee. Well, tomorrow Ackerman is hold his first hearing — on the “next steps in the Israeli-Palestinian Peace Process.”
According to a released issued by Ackerman’s office, the lineup is David Makovsky, director of the Project on the Middle East Peace Process at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy; Martin Indyk, director of the Brookings Institution’s Saban Center for Middle East Policy and a former U.S. Ambassador to Israel, and Daniel Pipes, director of the Middle East Forum.
Daniel Levy, a former adviser to the Office of the Israeli Prime Minister who was involved in peace talks with the Palestinians, has a post up at TalkingPoinstMemo.com blasting the selection of Pipes, a hawk who opposes Israeli concessions to the Palestinian Authority. Levy attributes the choice of Pipes to the Republicans on the committee.
Critics are also arguing that the list is not representative enough. In truth, the panel is pretty balanced on the question of whether the U.S. should increase its efforts to broker an Israeli-Palestinian deal. But all three experts are Jewish, with ties to the pro-Israel lobby. Last month I had a post wondering out loud about what it would mean to have Rep. Gary Ackerman — a staunch supporter of Israel who also has backed U.S. support for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas — chairing the House’s Middle East subcommittee. Well, tomorrow Ackerman is hold his first hearing — on the “next steps in the Israeli-Palestinian Peace Process.”
According to a released issued Tuesday by Ackerman’s office, the lineup is David Makovsky, director of the Project on the Middle East Peace Process at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy; Martin Indyk, director of the Brookings Institution’s Saban Center for Middle East Policy and a former U.S. Ambassador to Israel, and Daniel Pipes, director of the Middle East Forum.
Daniel Levy, a former adviser to the Office of the Israeli Prime Minister who was involved in peace talks with the Palestinians, has a post up at TalkingPoinstMemo.com blasting the selection of Pipes, a hawk who opposes Israeli concessions to the Palestinian Authority. Levy attributes the choice of Pipes, a late addition, to the Republicans on the committee.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
