On the morning of May 22, at the opening plenary of the 2011 AIPAC Policy Conference, the grand ballroom of the convention center here felt like a grand courtroom. The case: the organized pro-Israel Jewish community versus President Barack Obama’s May 19 speech.
Among the 10,000 attendees were more than 1,000 Los Angeles delegates representing Reform, Conservative and Orthodox congregations, including Democrats, Republicans and independents. And while the mood at the conference is famously nonpartisan, Los Angeles delegates, like all other attendees, lay in wait for Obama’s address, which most expected to be a statement, or restatement, of what seemed to many to be a shift in American policy. READ MORE.