AIPAC Anxiously Awaits Donald Trump's Speech

The billionaire's speech to America's leading pro-Israel lobby will be the center of attention to everyone at the annual conference, no matter if they like him or not.

Republican presidential candidate, businessman Donald Trump speaks at a rally in Vandalia, Ohio, March 12, 2016.

AP - As America's leading pro-Israel group prepares to hear from nearly all the presidential candidates, most eyes in the crowd of thousands of participants will be on GOP front-runner Donald Trump.


Expect Republicans Ted Cruz and John Kasich to espouse standard conservative fare. Democrat Hillary Clinton probably will stick to well-known positions. Rival Bernie Sanders - trying to become first Jewish candidate to win a major party's presidential nomination - is skipping the event.


In a broad sense, all the candidates confirmed to speak on Monday fall into one of those categories. Except Trump - and therein lies the angst.






On Mideast peace talks, Trump says: "You understand a lot of people have gone down in flames trying to make that deal. So I don't want to say whose fault it is - I don't think that helps." He also put off calls to clarify his position on the status of Jerusalem.

By contrast, Cruz is unabashedly pro-Israel and he called for Secretary of State John Kerry's resignation over what he considered anti-Israel bias. "A Cruz administration will on day one recognize Jerusalem as the eternal, undivided capital of Israel and the U.S. Embassy will be moved to Israel's capital city," Cruz says on his website.




Some have announced they will protest Trump, if not by disrupting his speech by walking out. Others have said the speech will be an important opportunity to hear Trump explain his views. The debate has played out in dramatic fashion since AIPAC issued its invitations and candidates began responding to them.


"We have been urging rabbis to simply not attend the Trump speech - to let our absence be felt and noted," Salkin wrote in a column for the Religious News Service last week. "Sometimes, you just have to scream - even silently."


"It's important that the lobby keep itself on decent terms with whatever powers govern in Washington," commentator J.J. Goldberg wrote in the Jewish newspaper The Forward. "Who holds those powers is an important question, never more so than this year, but it's not a question AIPAC exists to answer."
