There is no doubt the American Israel Public Affairs Committee has a great deal of power and influence. Yet in the Democratic Party at least, a dwindling number of candidates want to be publicly associated with the country’s most prominent pro-Israel political organization. It is no surprise, then, that multiple news organizations, including The New York Times and Chicago’s WBEZ, have found links between AIPAC’s donors, registered agents and vendors and new super PACs with innocuous-sounding names like Elect Chicago Women and Affordable Chicago Now. Those groups have poured at least $21 million into open-seat congressional primaries in and around Chicago, blanketing the airwaves with ads that don’t mention Israel at all.
AIPAC’s goal of keeping Israel a bipartisan cause looks increasingly endangered.
For all the money it invests, AIPAC’s goal of keeping Israel a bipartisan cause looks increasingly endangered. In many races, AIPAC can’t find a Democrat who will unequivocally stand by the Israeli government the way it would like. While Republicans have long been mostly unanimous in supporting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, AIPAC also wants to elect Democrats who won’t put conditions on aid for Israel or be too critical of Israel’s government — because a bipartisan cause is more insulated from the shifting political winds of a particular moment.
But this election year is making clear how rapidly the politics of support for Israel is shifting, to the point where even among candidates who have historically supported aid to Israel, support from AIPAC has become a black mark with which few Democrats want to be tarred.
The complex dynamics were on particularly vivid display Tuesday in Illinois’ 9th Congressional District, where Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss emerged as the projected winner in a field of candidates vying to succeed retiring Rep. Jan Schakowsky. At first, groups believed to be linked to AIPAC boosted state Sen. Laura Fine and attacked Biss. But with Fine attracting little support, AIPAC turned its sights onto Kat Abughazaleh, a young Palestinian American progressive and first-time candidate — but again, not by mentioning Israel. (One ad savaged her for supporting Marco Rubio’s presidential candidacy — when she was 16 years old.)
Abughazaleh turned the tables by making AIPAC’s attacks a centerpiece of her campaign, mocking the group and its ads to her substantial social media following. AIPAC then tried to peel off support from Abughazaleh by boosting trailing candidate Bushra Amiwala, who harshly condemned the group for helping her.
Even Biss, despite being the front-runner in the race he won, used AIPAC as a foil. “AIPAC finds someone like me really scary,” he said. “Someone who’s Jewish, someone whose mother is Israeli, someone whose grandparents survived the Holocaust and who is willing to stand up and say, ‘Listen, the conduct of the national government in Gaza has been a horror.’” Despite AIPAC’s best efforts, the seat will likely be filled by someone who sees AIPAC as more foe than friend.
The group has become an issue in the other Illinois races where it is spending money.
The group has become an issue in the other Illinois races where it is spending money. In the 8th District, AIPAC’s support for centrist former Rep. Melissa Bean helped Junaid Ahmed garner endorsements from Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y. In the 2nd District, Rep. Schakowsky withdrew her endorsement from Cook County Commissioner Donna Miller, who is running for that seat, because Schakowsky came to believe that AIPAC donors and PACs affiliated with AIPAC were behind that candidate. Schakowsky said, “Illinois deserves leaders who put voters first, not AIPAC or out-of-state Trump donors.” According to returns Tuesday, Miller was projected to win the Democratic nomination for that seat.
And Gov. JB Pritzker, the most important Democrat in the state and a possible presidential candidate, was once a financial supporter of AIPAC, but now says he “walked away” from the group a decade ago when he says it turned to the right.
Pritzker is not the only one shunning AIPAC. Multiple Democratic politicians who have received support from AIPAC in the past have said this year they will refuse any contributions from the group. That includes Rep. Valerie Foushee, D-N.C., who just squeaked out a narrow primary win against a progressive Muslim challenger, and Rep. Seth Moulton, who is running for Senate in Massachusetts. Moulton even said he would return the money he received from AIPAC in prior campaigns.
It might be a matter of principle, but those candidates could also be making a simple political calculation. Recent polls have shown that support for Israel has become deeply partisan. For instance, pollsters have long asked whether people feel more sympathetic toward the Israelis or the Palestinians (a problematic question, but one that can still be revealing), and last month, for the first time in Gallup polling, more Americans said they sympathize with the Palestinians. But the party divide is stark: Among Republicans, Israelis receive more sympathy, 70% to 13%, while among Democrats, Palestinians receive more sympathy, 65% to 17%. An even more recent NBC News poll produced almost identical results.
This split reflects the changing political character of the Israeli government itself, which has become more and more right wing in recent years. The last Labor Party prime minister, Ehud Barak, left office 25 years ago, and the Israeli left has shrunk into irrelevance. As Israel has pursued its brutal war in Gaza and kept Palestinians in the West Bank under a system fairly described as apartheid, fewer and fewer Democrats can find a way to conclude that Israel represents the liberal values they believe in.
AIPAC plays its own damaging role by demanding unquestioning fealty to the Netanyahu government.
So while the ultimate fault for the decline in support for Israel lies with the country’s government and its policies, AIPAC plays its own damaging role by demanding unquestioning fealty to the Netanyahu government. The barest hint of concern for the lives of Palestinians and their aspirations for self-governance can get a candidate targeted with a wave of negative ads.
But rather than cower in fear of AIPAC’s power, more Democrats are wearing the group’s opposition as a badge of honor. That draws them closer to their own constituents — and suggests that in the near future, AIPAC will lose even more support among Democrats, making it what Democratic candidates seem to already believe it is: just one more Republican interest group.
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