How this secretive organization influences American-Israeli relations

American Israel Public Affairs Committee - How this secretive organization influences American-Israeli relations

The USA stands by Israel's side. That was true before the Hamas attack - and has been truer than ever since the massacre on October 7. At least that's how it sounded when US President Joe Biden met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his war cabinet a few days after the escalation in the Middle East began. "I don't believe you have to be Jewish to be a Zionist, and I am a Zionist," Biden said at the time. Clear words for someone who represents a country that no longer knows exactly how to position itself in the conflict.

This is particularly evident in the US Congress. A group of left-wing Democrats led by the American-Palestinian politician Rashida Tlaib has been questioning the US government's approach to Israel for several years. Since the Hamas attack on Israel, these critical voices have become louder. Tlaib, for example, saw President Biden 's Middle East policy as supporting genocide in the Gaza Strip and campaigned for a ceasefire in the embattled coastal strip.

Congress disapproved of this: 234 members of Congress voted to censure Tlaib for her pro-Palestinian statements. Of the congressmen, 22 were Democrats. According to a report by the investigative platform "The Lever", 18 of them are said to have accepted money from an organization that is known in the USA as a pro-Israeli lobbying organization: Aipac (short for American Israel Public Affairs Committee).

Jewish donations for Democrats and Republicans

Whether it supports the interests of Jews or only the Israeli government is disputed among experts. According to its own statements, Aipac aims to strengthen Israeli-American relations and has more than three million members. Its predecessor, the American Zionist Committee for Public Affairs, was set up in the 1950s to defend Israel's reputation. After a bloody attack by Israeli troops on a village in the West Bank, in which 60 Palestinian civilians died, the organization was renamed. As Aipac, it helped to ensure that the USA supplied Israel with weapons in the 1960s, although Washington was critical of the young state(read more about this here).

Aipac is not the only Israeli lobby group in the USA. But it is considered the most powerful. More liberal groups such as J Street or Pro-Israel-America can hardly assert themselves against the organization, which is classified as right-wing conservative. Critics accuse it of pushing the US government towards a warmongering foreign policy.

The fact that pro-Palestinian voices are now becoming louder in Congress has prompted Aipac to actively intervene in the election process for the first time. Specifically, this involves campaign funding for the Democratic primaries. Over the past two years, the lobbying organization has spent more money on this than any other pro-Israeli group: according to the Open Secrets platform, the sister organization United Democracy Project has invested more than 23 million dollars in political campaigns. Far behind are J Street (six million dollars) and Pro-Israel America (just under 2.7 million dollars).

Campaign funding for Israel supporters

Both Republicans and Democrats, such as Congressmen Shontel Brown, Haley Stevens and Glenn Ivey, benefited from the donations. According to Open Secret, they are among the top beneficiaries of Aipac donations - but they are not the only ones:

Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives Mike Johnson received 25,000 dollars last year - more than from any other group. However, only 10,000 dollars came from the Aipac Political Action Committee (PAC), the rest was donated by individuals from the group.
Chuck Schumer, Democratic majority leader in the Senate, received campaign donations of 95,000 dollars between 2017 and 2022. Most recently, he supported the Senate resolution in favor of Israel, which was passed on September 19. Before the vote, Schumer reaffirmed Israel's right to defense and condemned "the heinous, vicious attacks by the terrorist group Hamas."
Democratic Congressman Josh Gottheimer benefited from 217,000 dollars from Aipac's ranks last year. He recently voted for the 14 billion dollar US aid package for Israel.
Republican Michael McCaul received almost 8,000 dollars from Aipac circles in 2022. Most recently, a pro-Israeli resolution he introduced was adopted in the House of Representatives.

The money is evidently also intended to boot out those candidates who do not follow a clearly pro-Israeli line and could potentially ally themselves with the left-wing ranks of the Democrats who are critical of Israel.

The case of Andy Levin

A prominent example: Andy Levin from the state of Michigan. The Democrat in the US parliament and former president of a synagogue with a pro-Israeli stance also spoke out in favor of Palestinian rights. With a resolution in Congress, he also called for an end to the "Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories" and advocated a two-state solution.

According to an internal email, Aipac now saw "a rare opportunity to defeat arguably the most corrosive member of Congress for US-Israel relations", reports The Lever. The lobby group mobilized nearly four million dollars to support Levin's challenger, Haley Stevens - who ultimately won. Speaking to MSNBC, Levin said that without human rights for Palestinians, there is no safe homeland for Jewish people. Aipac could not stand that he was advocating this thesis, he said. "That's it."

How loyal is the USA to the Israelis?

US President Joe Biden was also one of the Aipac profiteers. During his time as a senator in Delaware, he received a total of 4.2 million dollars from 1990 to 2009. The extent to which the donations influence his current attitude towards Israel is uncertain. The fact that the US president describes himself as a Zionist may also be due to his father, who vehemently supported the founding of the state of Israel after the Holocaust.

Biden has been involved in the Israeli-Arab conflict throughout his political career. As Vice-President, he has smoothed out the odd imbalance between Barack Obama and Benjamin Netanyahu. "Whenever things got out of hand with Israel, Biden was the bridge," Middle East adviser Dennis Ross told the Reuters news agency. "His commitment to Israel was so strong ... And that's the instinct we're seeing now."

Much like his supporters in Congress, the US public is not as united behind Biden's solidarity with Israel. According to Reuters, a third of US citizens polled in mid-November believed that the US should be a neutral mediator in the Middle East war and not take Israel's side. Another third thought the opposite.

A Quinnipiac University poll from the same period found that more than half of respondents sympathized with Israel and a quarter with the Palestinians. These figures are remarkable when compared with the survey results from October: at that time, 61 percent still sympathized with Israel and only 13 percent with the Palestinians. And: younger people under 30 in particular tend to take a pro-Palestinian stance.

Natan Sachs, Director of the Center for Middle East Policy, also observes the ideological differences between the generations. Younger people in particular tend to view "the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through the lens of human and civil rights rather than security and terrorism", he told Deutsche Welle. This is also evident among young democrats. It is questionable how Aipac's donations can influence the party's stance in the future.