US Attorney-General Jeff Sessions was roundly mocked on Tuesday for referencing a “Jewish AIPAC event” during his testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee probing allegations of collusion between Russia and members of the presidential campaign of US President Donald Trump during last year’s elections.
Sessions said he was excited to attend a speech to be given by Trump because the only time he’d heard him speak previously was at a “Jewish AIPAC event,” in reference to the pro-Israel lobby the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).
Trump, as a candidate, spoke before the organization and its guests at the annual AIPAC conference in 2016.
In his testimony, Sessions said he had been “very anxious to see how president Trump would do in his first major foreign policy address. I believe he’d only given one major speech before, that was maybe at the Jewish AIPAC event…”
The Twitterverse mocked the attorney-general for the remark, which erroneously refered to the organization as “Jewish,” when it lobbies for Israel and has many non-Jewish members and activists.
Calling AIPAC a “Jewish lobby” would “add up to an effort to delegitimize pro-Israel activists and has elements of age-old anti-Semitic conspiracy theories alleging insidious Jewish efforts to dominate seats of power,” the Anti-Defamation League once described in a past statement.