After decades of avoiding direct involvement in electoral politics, the country’s flagship Israel lobby group, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, formed a pair of political action committees in recent years and has been spending millions on political races. Its targets have been progressives, with AIPAC becoming heavily involved in Democratic primaries. In addition to recruiting candidates to challenge incumbent Democrats, the group plans to spend at least $100 million on 2024 races.
Progressives are now fighting back, building a bulwark against the pro-Israel lobby onslaught with a new campaign to reject AIPAC. A group of 25 progressive organizations, including Justice Democrats, the Working Families Party, the IfNotNow Movement, and Jewish Voice for Peace, launched the Reject AIPAC coalition Monday. The coalition plans to organize against AIPAC across electoral, political, and digital arenas. One facet of the plan calls for a seven-figure electoral spending campaign to defend members of Congress being targeted by AIPAC.
Financed by AIPAC’s major donors, including Republican billionaires and key GOP funders, the 2021 launch of the Israel lobby’s new super PAC was readymade to outspend progressives. AIPAC and its allies have reshaped the electoral field in key primaries, shifted the balance of power in Congress, and imposed costly consequences for criticism of U.S. support for Israel’s human rights abuses.
The Washington debate around the Israeli–Palestinian conflict has become particularly fraught amid Israel’s relentless assault on the Gaza Strip. Even as the International Court of Justice ruled that a case against Israel for genocide should proceed, progressive members of Congress have been attacked for using the term — or, early on in the war, just for calling for a ceasefire.
AIPAC recruited and is bankrolling a challenger to Rep. Jamaal Bowman, D-N.Y., who made early and forceful calls for a ceasefire in the Gaza war. Rep. Summer Lee, D-Pa., who faced an AIPAC spending onslaught in 2022, is expected to face millions in AIPAC expenditures again this year.
“We have watched as AIPAC has done everything it can to silence growing dissent in Congress against Netanyahu’s assault on Gaza — which has killed over 31,000 Palestinians — even as Democratic voters overwhelmingly support a ceasefire and oppose sending more blank checks to the Israeli military,” the coalition said. “Now, AIPAC’s Republican donor-funded Super PAC, the United Democracy Project, is threatening to spend $100 million targeting the handful of Black and brown members of Congress who have led the calls for a ceasefire and the equal protection of Palestinian and Israeli lives.”
AIPAC and its allies’ growing influence on Democratic Party politics has presented a major problem for progressives. The organizations backing progressives rely mostly on small-dollar donors and can’t compete with AIPAC’s war chest.
Even as it attacks Democrats on the party’s left flank, however, AIPAC has cozied up to the GOP’s far right. In the 2020 election, AIPAC endorsed more than 100 Republicans who voted to overturn the results of that year’s presidential race.
This year, the group encouraged Republicans to switch parties to vote in at least one Democratic primary where it recruited Westchester County Executive George Latimer to run against Bowman. AIPAC is the biggest donor to Latimer’s campaign so far.
While progressive candidates like Lee have fended off AIPAC and its allies, its chilling effects reach far beyond elections. The group also has an outsized lobbying influence on Capitol Hill and spends millions of dollars a year on lobbying efforts, another arena in which the left has been outmatched.
The Reject AIPAC coalition says it will try to counterbalance those efforts on the Hill and call on members to disavow AIPAC’s endorsement and instead sign a pledge not to take any more money from the group. For the moment, however, many senior Democrats, including those in leadership, have benefited from AIPAC’s largesse.
“The overwhelming influence of corporate Super PACs on our democracy and elections has expanded the gap between voters and their elected leaders into a canyon that has been exploited by every special interest and corporate lobby,” the coalition said. “Rejecting AIPAC is a crucial step in putting voters back at the center of our democracy.”