Friends,
Recently, AIPAC launched a wave of negative ads targeting former Congressman Tom Malinowski in a congressional primary race in New Jersey.
AIPAC’s super PAC, the United Democracy Project, has so far committed over $800,000 – with far more almost certainly coming – to attacking Malinowski for voting for a 2019 bipartisan funding bill that included immigration enforcement funding.
Given AIPAC’s failure to speak out in opposition to ICE’s shocking deployment, brutal tactics and deadly violence – or to the Trump administration’s broader assault on democratic norms – its use of this issue for a political attack from the left is the height of political hypocrisy.
The move, though, isn’t a surprise. It continues a five-year pattern of deploying vast financial resources – primarily raised from Republican donors – to intimidate, punish or defeat Democrats AIPAC deems insufficiently pro-Israel.
With tens of millions of dollars in the bank, the implicit threat to sitting members of Congress and candidates alike is hard to ignore.
AIPAC’s ads run in the name of “the United Democracy Project” because they know that running ads in its own name would backfire in a Democratic primary.
AIPAC could spend its political dollars in other ways – for instance, supporting candidates pushing for the implementation of the 20-point ceasefire plan in Gaza or positively promoting its mission of strengthening the US-Israel relationship itself.
It could even – if it really wanted to reflect American Jewish opinion at this critical moment – use its capital to support those defending American democracy from the existential attacks it faces.
What it is doing instead – dumping massive sums into competitive Democratic primaries to take down thoughtful pro-Israel Democrats who don’t want to give a blank check to Bibi Netanyahu – is not the way to build durable bipartisan support for Israel in the United States.
It in fact weakens bipartisan support, alienates the next generation – Jewish and non-Jewish alike – and ties Israel’s fate to the most corrosive elements of American politics.
It also risks generating anger – toward Israel, toward Israel’s friends, and, more dangerously, toward the Jewish community broadly – something all of us who care about Israel’s future should find alarming.
This is especially dangerous at a time when far-right forces in both Israel and the United States are eroding democratic norms, minority protections and the rule of law.
Israel, American democracy and the American Jewish community all deserve better.
Yours,
Jeremy Ben-Ami
President, J Street
