The Council for the National Interest (CNI) is a 501(c)(4) non-profit, non-partisan anti-war advocacy group focused on transparency about the relationship between Israel and the United States and accountability for the impact their alliance has for other nations and individuals in other countries, especially those in the Middle East. Based in the United States and most active during the 2000s decade, the Council has highlighted Israel's disposition towards its neighbors, Palestinian rights, and other aspects of Middle East life and relations are impacted by the Israel's policies and its financial, trade, and military relationships with the US. They have focused on popular sentiment and perceptions in the US and the between the two countries. They highlight how these policies have impacted the fate of Palestine and, treatment of Muslims within the US since the 1990s.
Personnel and formation The CNI is aligned with The Council for the National Interest Foundation ("CNIF"), an independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. CNI was founded in 1989 by former Congressmen Paul Findley (R-Ill.) and Pete McCloskey (R-Calif.). Its first executive director was ten-term congressman John B. Anderson (R-Ill.), who ran as an Independent candidate in the 1980 presidential election.
Other officials involved with CNI over the years include long-time president Eugene Bird, a retired career foreign service officer;Delinda C. Hanley, "Waging Peace: Republican Statesmen Urge Bush to Change Middle East Policy", Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, April 1, 2004. Edward Peck, former Chief of Mission to Iraq deputy director of the White House Task Force on Terrorism in the Reagan Administration.;"Hezbollah Leader Hassan Nasrallah Talks With Former US Diplomats on Israel, Prisoners and Hezbollahs Founding", Democracy Now, July 28, 2006. former United States Senator James Abourezk; former CNI Vice-chair David Newton, a former United States Ambassador to Iraq and Yemen, and Richard H. Curtiss, former chief inspector of the United States Information Agency.Megan McDonough, "Richard H. Curtiss, USIA chief inspector", The Washington Post, February 12, 2013.
Ambassador (ret.) Robert V. Keeley is CNI's chair and Alison Weir is the organization's president. Former Central Intelligence Agency officer Philip Giraldi is its executive director. Giraldi has stated that CNI has 12,000 members.Eric Stirgus, Karishma Mehrotra, "Billboards question aid to Israel", The Atlanta Journal-Constitution PolitiFact website, February 12, 2013.
CNI was a member of the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights until 2017, when it was removed for violating the campaign's policy on antisemitism, due to Giraldi's expression of antisemitism in an article for the Unz Review.
Activities
Position statements CNI issues position statements, articles and recommendations on Middle East-related issues and is quoted in mainstream and Middle East media. In 1988 CNI President Eugene Bird wrote about Israel's ignoring United States State Department complaints about detention and possible torture of U.S. citizens.Eugene Bird, "Israel Ignores U.S. Protests Over Torture, Detention Of Young American Citizen in Israeli Prison", Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, October–November 1998, pages 22, 102. In early 2002, Eugene Bird criticized then-United States President George W. Bush for supporting Israel's policies in the occupied West Bank.Eugene Bird, "Witnessing a War for Peace in Afghanistan And a War for Conquest in Palestine", Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, March 2002, page 18. In 2003, CNI called for the Senate to reject Daniel Pipes as a trustee of the United States Institute of Peace, charging he had "gone out of his way to say insulting things to Arabs, Palestinians, Muslim Americans, Black Muslims, Muslims and Islam.""Daniel Pipes' Nomination" , editorial by Council for the National Interest, Al Jazeera. July 24, 2003. In 2004 it opined on the probable transfer of power from Yasser Arafat to his successor.* "Analysis: Preparing the post-Arafat era" (2004) In 2005 a representative criticized a World Bank's proposed plan to give Palestinians money to enhance check points, noting that if those checkpoints were in the occupied territories it was against international law. After the U.S. Congress gave Israel a vote of confidence during its 2006 bombing of Lebanon, Eugene Bird said, "This is the usual problem with any resolution that talks about Israel—there are a lot of closet naysayers (in Congress), but they don't want to be a target of the lobby of Israel."Barbara Ferguson, "American Lawmakers Give Israel Their Vote of Confidence" , Arab News, July 25, 2006. In October 2006, CNI published a piece on the negative effect of Christian Zionists on U.S. foreign policy,CNI, "Christian Zionism: An Egregious Threat to Middle East Understanding" , Z Communications, October 28, 2006. and held a forum on the topic featuring Reverend Bob Edgar of the National Council of Churches."Item: The Armageddon Vote in 2006: Christian Zionists and the Midterm Elections", ABC News calendar, October 25, 2006. In April 2006, after professors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt produced their disputed paper entitled "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy", CNI's Paul Findley told National Public Radio he was pleased about the paper and said "I think I can pose as a foremost expert on the lobby for Israel, because I was the target the last three years I was in Congress."Deborah Amos, "Paper on Israel Lobby Sparks Heated Debate", NPR, April 21, 2006. In the first days of the 2008–2009 Gaza War, CNI issued a statement comparing the attacks to the 1960 Sharpeville massacre where the South African apartheid regime killed 69 protesters, leading eventually to sanctions against the regime.Firoz Osman, "Palestine massacre must be stopped", The Sowetan, January 16, 2009. In August 2009, Paul Findley was quoted by The Christian Science Monitor as saying that President Obama's demands Israel stop the settlements had made him a target of the Israel lobby in the United States.David R. Francis, "Economic Scene: Sanctions on Iran and Israel could defuse Middle East", The Christian Science Monitor, August 5, 2009.
Draft legislation In 2004, CNI proposed the "Israel Accountability and Security Act of 2004". It called upon Israel to dismantle all existing settlements outside of the 1967 border, to halt construction of the Israeli West Bank barrier, to end home demolitions in the West Bank and Gaza, and to dismantle its nuclear weapons program and join a Middle East non-proliferation treaty, and to engage in "serious and unconditional" negotiations with the Palestinians, Syria and Lebanon. Noncompliance would result in U.S.-imposed diplomatic, military and economic sanctions. It also commissioned a Zogby poll which found 56 per cent of Americans agreed that Congress should pass such a bill. The bill never became law.
Israel lobby in the United States
CNI representatives have signed on to joint initiatives, as Eugene Bird did to the 2004 letter by 60 former U.S. diplomats who distributed a letter critical of President George W. Bush's "endorsement of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's unilateral plan to reject the rights of three million Palestinians, to deny the right of refugees to return to their homeland, and to retain five large illegal settlement blocs in the occupied West Bank", reversing "long-standing American policy in the Middle East".Sam Husseini, "Institute for Public Accuracy news wrapup" , published at Common Dreams, May 6, 2004. In February 2005, CNI joined other concerned organizations in a meeting with Department of State officials regarding Israeli mistreatment of Palestinian American prisoners and called for the release of some of the prisoners.State Department to be Questioned on Silence regarding American Detainees in Israel, Press Release, Council for the National Interest, February 16, 2005. In May 2005, CNI joined with more than a dozen groups to protest the annual American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) convention."Three Speakers Set for Protest Against Aipac's Promotion of Occupation of Palestine and War Against Iran", CNI press release, May 21, 2005. In July 2006, CNI co-sponsored a protest of over 400 people at the Israeli Embassy during the 2006 Lebanon War between Israel and Hezbollah.William Hughes, "Demonstrators in DC Charge Israel with Barbarism in Lebanon/Gaza", Baltimore Chronicle, July 28, 2006. In 2007 CNI joined 30 other groups calling for the U.S. government to obtain detailed site information on Israel's cluster bomb strikes in Lebanon during its 2006 attacks on that nation.Thirty-one Groups Call for Israel to Release Cluster Bomb Data, American Task Force for Lebanon, June 15, 2007. In 2012, the Council's director Alison Weir participated in a panel on AIPAC during the "Occupy AIPAC" conference in Washington, D.C., that was organized by a number of antiwar and pro-Palestinian groups.Dale Sprusansky, "Occupy AIPAC" Provides Counter-Narrative, Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, May 2012, pg. 73–74.'Occupy AIPAC' Conference Seeks to Lambast Pro-Israel Lobby and Cast Antiwar Agenda as the '99%', Anti-Defamation League, March 2, 2012.
Polls
CNI has commissioned several polls. A 2003 Zogby International poll showed that while 56% of Americans strongly support or somewhat support a Palestinian state, 30% somewhat or strongly oppose a Palestinian state while 14% were not sure.Richard H. Curtiss, The Road Map to ME Peace — Speed Bumps and All, Arab News, July 18, 2003. A mid-2004 Zogby poll found that half of all likely American voters agreed that Democratic Party presidential candidate John Kerry "should adopt an entirely new policy, different from the present administration, toward Israel.""Poll shows half of likely US voters want new policy toward Israel", Daily Star, August 3, 2004. A 2006 Zogby poll on the Iraq war found that a nearly equal number of likely American voters (40 to 39 percent) agreed or disagreed with the proposition that "the work of the Israel lobby on Congress and the Bush administration has been a key factor for going to war in Iraq and now confronting Iran."Eric Fingerhut, "Toward Tradition staying put" , Jewish Week, November 3, 2006.
Conferences and hearings In April 2002, CNI's Foundation sponsored a four-day conference titled "Rescue U.S. Middle East Policy and Challenge the Lobby" meant to draw attention to what it believed was the George W. Bush administration's lop-sided pro-Israeli policies. Speakers included former members of the United States Congress, representatives of Palestinian and Arab groups who recently had witnessed Israeli demolition of West Bank refugee camps during "Operation Defensive Shield", and members of the media who discussed the media's role in foreign policy. Conference attendees also spent a full day lobbying members of congress.Terry Waltz, CNIF Conference Aims to Rescue U.S. Foreign Policy, Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, 2002.