{"id":144015,"date":"2015-03-02T21:04:51","date_gmt":"2015-03-02T21:04:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=144015"},"modified":"2015-03-02T21:04:51","modified_gmt":"2015-03-02T21:04:51","slug":"netanyahu-heads-dc-codepink-tries-shut-aipac","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/politics\/netanyahu-heads-dc-codepink-tries-shut-aipac\/","title":{"rendered":"As Netanyahu Heads to DC, CodePink Tries to Shut Down AIPAC"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As Israel\u2019s prime minister, <span class=\" u-underline\">Benjamin Netanyahu<\/span>, is crossing the Atlantic heading to Washington to deliver Tuesday&#8217;s controversial speech to Congress on Iran, activists are spending Sunday trying to shut down the annual conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).<\/p>\n<p>AIPAC has been called \u201cthe most important organization affecting America\u2019s relationship with Israel,\u201d and one of the most powerful lobbying groups in the US.<\/p>\n<p>At least 5 CodePink activists had been arrested by early Sunday afternoon:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Protesters linked arms in a sit-in to block one of the doors to the Convention Center. Later arrested <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/ShutDownAIPAC?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#ShutDownAIPAC<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/t.co\/O1qQbqCvi1\">pic.twitter.com\/O1qQbqCvi1<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Yasmine El-Sabawi (@yasmineelsabawi) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/yasmineelsabawi\/status\/572118788017131520?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">March 1, 2015<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Netanyahu left Israel&#8217;s Ben Gurion airport Sunday morning telling reporters: \u201cI\u2019m going to Washington on a fateful, even historic, mission.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Netanyahu will speak to the AIPAC conference on Monday and deliver his speech to Congress on Tuesday before returning home.<\/p>\n<p>On Sunday, a group representing nearly 200 of Israel\u2019s top retired military and intelligence officials slammed the move as a direct assault on the US-Israel alliance, claiming it will actually bring Iran closer to a nuclear bomb.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen the Israeli prime minister argues that his speech will stop Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, he is not only misleading Israel \u2014 he is actually strengthening Iran,\u201d General (res) Amnon Reshef, the former head of Israel\u2019s armoured corps and the founder of Commanders for Israel\u2019s Security, said at a press conference in Tel Aviv on Sunday morning.<\/p>\n<p>Reshef was joined by five other generals who called on Netanyahu to cancel his speech, warning of its dangers to Israeli security.<\/p>\n<p><em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.commondreams.org\/news\/2015\/03\/01\/netanyahu-heads-dc-codepink-tries-shut-down-aipac\" target=\"_blank\">This piece<\/a> was reprinted by <a href=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\">RINF Alternative News<\/a> with permission or license.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As Israel\u2019s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is crossing the Atlantic heading to Washington to deliver Tuesday&#8217;s controversial speech to Congress on Iran, activists are spending Sunday trying to shut down the annual conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). AIPAC has been called \u201cthe most important organization affecting America\u2019s relationship with Israel,\u201d and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":144016,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487,17],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-144015","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news","8":"category-politics"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144015","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=144015"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144015\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/144016"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=144015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=144015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=144015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}