A Democratic National Committee member is proposing a symbolic resolution for consideration at a DNC meeting next month to reject the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s massive spending on Congressional races.
The measure, sponsored by a young DNC member from Florida, could put party leaders on the spot about the pro-Israel lobbying group’s outsized role in Democratic primaries.
A lobbying behemoth that for decades courted lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, AIPAC has become an increasingly toxic brand in the Democratic Party.
In recent years, Israeli leaders and their backers in Washington have become more closely aligned with Republican politicians. At the same time, however, AIPAC’s super PAC has focused tens of millions in spending on Democratic primary races.
Daniel Biss says he didn’t take any AIPAC money but was also not willing to denounce aid to Israel on the same level as Kat did. I haven’t looked enough into whether or not he accepted shadow money from AIPAC, but its very telling that AIPAC celebrated his win over Kat even though their opebly funded candidate Laura Fine lost.
Laura Fine took a ton of AIPAC money to split the vote from Kat. They were also paying influencers $1500 a post to disparage Kat. She’s Palestinian, so they threw millions against her in the final days of the race to ensure democracy didn’t function.
He’s not their friend, but she was openly their enemy. And they want to take credit for it, to maintain the sense that they call the shots.
They campaigned against Biss and I think he said he wants conditions on aid to Israel (which is currently unconditional).
This is not a win in any way for AIPAC, but the loss would have been bigger if Kat had won, which she nearly did, so I guess that’s something?
It’s definitely a sort of progress. I’ve seen interviews where Biss said that he encouraged AIPAC to sit the campaign out, but then they threatened him, so he made AIPAC funding an issue in the campaign. They also told him he was a bigger problem for them than Kat was, since he’s Jewish and the son of Shoah survivors. That makes him harder to discredit.
Having said all that, I don’t see Biss as a committed anti-Zionist, more as someone who won’t be unconditionally subservient to Netanyahu.
As long as he opposes genocide. That’s good enough for me. (And it’s ridiculous that that’s where the bar is.)