World
The US-dominated International Order is collapsing
History will prove that the Russo-Ukrainian war and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict were catalysts for paradigmatic changes in the international landscape and the driving force behind the eventual demise of the US-led “liberal international order.” During the Cold War period after World War II, two “international orders” emerged in the world, namely the “socialist international order” Continue reading »
Outrage at Chuck Schumer’s Speech: The Pro-Israel Right Wants to Eat Its Cake Too
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat from New York, departs the Senate Chamber at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on March 14, 2024. Schumer called for Israel to hold new elections, a sharp break with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from the highest-ranking Jewish U.S. elected official.
Photo: Tierney L. Cross/Bloomberg via Getty Images
On Thursday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., gave a speech that provoked anger from right-wing supporters of Israel, many who described it as a regime-change effort targeting Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu. The roughly 40-minute speech, delivered by Schumer on the floor of the Senate, attacked Hamas as well as critics of Israel, while vowing that the U.S. would defend and support Israel through any crises it faced. But Schumer also took direct aim at Netanyahu, describing his government as “an obstacle to peace” and saying that his coalition government “no longer fits the needs of Israel.”
Schumer went further in his remarks, calling for elections in Israel to bring a new government to power and saying that Netanyahu had “lost his way by allowing his political survival to take precedence over the best interests of Israel.”
Despite its otherwise pro-Israel tone, Schumer’s speech predictably triggered outrage among staunch pro-Israel Republicans, including many neoconservatives. Writing for the Council on Foreign Relations, Elliott Abrams, of Iran–Contra fame, hysterically accused Schumer of attempting to turn Israel into an “American colony” by intervening in its politics. “It’s a shameful and unprecedented way to treat an ally,” he wrote, “and an “unconscionable interference in the internal politics of another democracy.” His views were echoed by Israeli officials like former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, who took to social media to denounce his comments as “external political intervention” in Israeli affairs.
These arguments could perhaps be respected were it not for the massive, regular, and institutionalized intervention in U.S. political life carried about by the Israeli government and its supporters, which has successfully turned the affairs of a small country on the eastern Mediterranean into one of the most important domestic political issues in America. Netanyahu himself has shown no embarrassment about his own intervention in American politics, delivering rapturous speeches lobbying the U.S. Congress to legislate in favor of Israel and essentially endorsing his favored political candidates for office during U.S. elections.
American foreign policy is today effectively handcuffed by the lobbying efforts of powerful special interest groups like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. These organizations are hellbent on ensuring that the U.S. provide Israel unstinting military, economic, and diplomatic support, even as its government rebuffs repeated U.S. requests to allow the creation of a Palestinian state in accordance with international law.
The complaints of people like Abrams and Bennett that the U.S. is intervening in Israeli affairs seem utterly myopic at best, given that extensive U.S. intervention is not just welcomed but also demanded by Israel and its supporters so long as it is in accordance with the security and political needs of the Israeli government.
Now More Than Ever
Schumer’s speech comes at a moment in which Israel has perhaps never been more isolated, or more dependent on U.S. support. The U.S. today has pivoted back to the Middle East against its own wishes, fighting the Houthis on behalf of Israel, providing arms for Israel’s campaign in Gaza, and deterring Hezbollah in Lebanon by parking its aircraft carriers in the Mediterranean. When three American military service members were killed in Jordan earlier this year, the assailants were clear that their motive was retaliating against U.S. support of Israel.
Israel’s War on Gaza
The U.S. has used its veto powers at the United Nations to shield Israel from an onslaught of global outrage over the scenes of mass killing and starvation in Gaza. As Israel has faced diplomatic assaults from Brazil, South Africa, China, and across the Muslim world, the U.S. has remained steadfast as its most important and often only defender in international fora.
All this support has come with very little reciprocation from Israel. In the wake of President Joe Biden’s comments expressing rhetorical support for an eventual two-state solution, Netanyahu publicly humiliated his most important patron by publicly vowing that no Palestinian state would ever be created. The right-wing prime minister even bragged about his own historic role in preventing one from coming into existence.
Netanyahu’s steadfast commitment to defying international law and overwhelming global opinion to pursue a project of continued colonization of the West Bank is only made possible thanks to his and his supporters’ tremendously successful campaign at bending U.S. politics in Israel’s favor. No country has been a greater beneficiary of U.S. support, nor has any country given less back for the tremendous blank checks that the U.S. has written it for decades, up until the present day.
Schumer’s comments on the Senate floor, despite their opposition to Netanyahu and his extremist coalition government, were resoundingly supportive of Israel and hostile to its enemies. But in calling for a two-state solution to the conflict, he contradicted not just Netanyahu but also a majority of the Israeli public who today oppose such an outcome and prefer the status quo, which requires systematic disenfranchisement of Palestinians that human rights groups have classified as apartheid.
In this light, the Senate majority leader’s comments should not be taken as an effort to engineer a color revolution on the streets of Tel Aviv, but rather a last attempt to prevent Israel from descending to a level of ostracism from which even the U.S. would strain to rescue it. “Israel cannot hope to succeed as a pariah opposed by the rest of the world,” Schumer said.
Israel’s supporters who were incensed by his words would be better off taking them as wise counsel.
The post Outrage at Chuck Schumer’s Speech: The Pro-Israel Right Wants to Eat Its Cake Too appeared first on The Intercept.
Asia, America or independence: Australians have decided, will politicians listen?
A recent poll conducted by The Guardian found that nearly twice as many people agreed with Paul Keating’s suggestion that Australia should be an independent ‘middle power’ in Asia, rather than an ally of the United States. Perhaps the electorate are smarter than some of our political class seem to think. There really is something Continue reading »
Phoney secrets and scares about foreign powers
One thing is certain about espionage agencies. They are not averse to creating alarm in order to give the impression they are protecting us from threats by ideological fanatics internally or by hostile foreign powers. There is always a kind of self-fulfilling prophesy about their pronouncements and the most recent panic about an unidentified former Continue reading »
More Than 20 Student Groups Protested. A Lawsuit Asks Why Columbia Only Suspended Two.
In November, Columbia University students staged a protest against Israel’s war on Gaza. There was a “die-in,” an art installation, and a list of demands, among them that the school administration publicly call for a ceasefire and divest from companies implicated in Israel’s violence. The protest concluded with students singing “We Shall Overcome.”
A day later, Columbia suspended two of the student groups who had co-sponsored the demonstration. Senior Executive Vice President Gerald Rosberg called it an “unauthorized event” that “proceeded despite warnings and included threatening rhetoric and intimidation.”
Now, those groups have sued the school. On Tuesday, the New York Civil Liberties Union and Palestine Legal filed a lawsuit against Columbia University, “for the unlawful suspension of its chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) for engaging in peaceful protest.” The groups seek reinstatement and a declaration that the school violated state law in carrying out the suspensions.
The suit — brought on behalf of the SJP and JVP chapters, as well as one Palestinian and one Jewish student — notes that the November 9 protest was “sponsored by a coalition comprised of over 20 groups,” and that nevertheless, the “two groups were given no notice of the planned suspensions and no opportunity to respond to the charges or to contest them. None of the other groups involved in the event faced disciplinary action.”
The plaintiffs draw attention to a “Special Committee on Campus Safety,” created in the aftermath of Hamas’s attack on October 7, which carried out the suspensions (Rosberg is its chair). They say that the suspended student groups, the university senate, and broader school community only learned of the committee’s existence after it took action. The suit adds “the Petitioner students had previously been warned by their student advisor about a so-called ‘protest-shutting-down committee’ that had been regularly meeting and purportedly waiting for SJP, especially, to make a wrong move.”
The suit notes that Rosberg told SJP and JVP in a November 30 meeting — also attended by other administrators, university senators, and faculty members — that they had not been suspended for a violation of the university code of conduct. According to the students, he did not specify what exactly accounted for the decision, or why it was conducted in such a public manner. “When pressed to specify which of the student groups’ actions constituted ‘threatening rhetoric and intimidation,’ VP Rosberg proffered that protestors’ accusations that Israel was ‘a racist state committing genocide’ and ‘is an apartheid state’ could upset some people and ‘seem … like an incitement of violence,’” the suit reads. (In December, students confronted Rosberg, asking him, “Are Palestinians human?” He responded, “I refuse to be intimidated.”)
“Clearly, Columbia has the capacity to act quickly to enact unilateral policy changes and take extreme actions, but only insofar as they can preserve the interests of their investments in Israel and their donors.”
Columbia declined to comment on the pending litigation. The university still has an open investigation into a January protest on campus where pro-Palestinian students were attacked with chemicals. Students maintained to The Intercept that the university had disregarded their complaints about the attack at the protest. The demonstration had also been labeled “unsanctioned.”
“It was incredibly frustrating to see a ‘Special Committee on Campus Safety’ weaponize the notion of safety to restrict dissent when, in doing so, they in fact compromised the safety of Palestinian and pro-Palestinian students,” one of the plaintiffs, Maryam Alwan, told The Intercept. “Clearly, Columbia has the capacity to act quickly to enact unilateral policy changes and take extreme actions, but only insofar as they can preserve the interests of their investments in Israel and their donors — not when it comes to the physical safety of pro-Palestinian students.”
Penn Sued to Block “Witch Hunt”
At the University of Pennsylvania, meanwhile, campus affiliates are also taking their school to court. Penn Faculty for Justice in Palestine — made up of professors, staff, and graduate students — filed a legal complaint on Saturday pressing the university to not hand over teaching files, emails, and other documents to the House Committee on Education and the Workforce. (Penn did not respond to a request for comment on the complaint.)
The committee is investigating what it claims is “rampant antisemitism” on college campuses, namely Ivy League schools like Penn and Harvard University, as well as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It’s the same committee — with Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., at the helm — that held hearings in December that led to the resignation of Penn President Elizabeth Magill and Harvard’s Claudine Gay.
The Penn faculty group said, “The Committee is engaged in a partisan witch hunt by seeking syllabi, academic papers, and other material from Penn faculty of all ranks, with the search highlighting keywords like Jew, Israel, antisemitism, Palestine, Gaza, resistance, settler colonialism and diversity, equity and inclusion, to name most of their criteria.”
Israel’s War on Gaza
The “would-be McCarthyesque House of Representatives is behaving as if it never heard of the First Amendment,” the complaint continues. The faculty members cited the passage of House Resolution 894 — which equates anti-Zionism with antisemitism — and the fact that the committee is seeking to obtain student information deemed confidential under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act.
Plaintiff Eve Troutt Powell, a professor of Middle Eastern history at Penn, told The Intercept that the university was in a difficult position, being under attack from Congress and donor pressure, but that the school should have stood firm. “We have been doxxed and we have been harassed and the university has promised it would protect us,” she said, “but we now understand that the university has been giving over documents, perhaps in hopes that this congressional committee will not subpoena the university, and we don’t accept it.”
Troutt Powell noted that Penn faculty and students are already feeling pressure after Magill’s resignation and from statements by Marc Rowan, the billionaire CEO of private equity firm Apollo Global Management, who is chair of the board of advisers of the university’s Wharton School of Business.
Rowan has advanced an assault on academic freedom at Penn, all while smearing its students for their views on Israel. He suggested the university eliminate certain departments — including the arts and sciences school — and revise policies surrounding hiring and campus speech. He has derided students as antisemitic for using the phrase “from the river to the sea,” while at the same time calling them ignorant: “If you ask these kids what river and what sea, they don’t know. Who lives between the river and the sea? They don’t know. How did they get there? They don’t know,” he said at the Economic Club of Washington last month.
Rowan is also among the “critical Penn donors” who shelled out tens of thousands of dollars in January to Foxx, the Virginia House member, after her crusade against colleges including Penn began.
“We’re not hearing enough of a response” from the school administration, Troutt Powell said. “I feel like I wouldn’t tell a graduate student to come here if you’re going to work on Middle East stuff. I’m worried about my junior colleagues very much and I’ve never seen a university go from safe to unsafe so quickly.”
A week after Magill’s resignation in December, and in response to comments by Rowan, over 900 school faculty signed a letter railing against “attempts by trustees, donors, and other external actors to interfere with our academic policies and to undermine academic freedom.”
The lawsuit takes this a step further, asking a judge to issue an injunction to stop the university from cooperating with the House investigation.
Faculty for Justice in Palestine said, “Penn FJP hopes that this lawsuit will encourage Penn to … protect its faculty from a committee that forced the resignation of former president M. Liz Magill — for the first time in both the House Congressional Committee’s history and that of the university.”
The post More Than 20 Student Groups Protested. A Lawsuit Asks Why Columbia Only Suspended Two. appeared first on The Intercept.
Billion-Dollar Jewish Communal Fund Bars Donations to Progressive Jewish Group
The Jewish Communal Fund is one of the country’s largest donor-advised funds: a type of charity that collects often large donations, then lets the contributor direct the funds to nonprofits. Now, the Jewish Communal Fund has barred its members from directing their own contributions to the organization Jewish Voice for Peace, according to an interview with a Jewish Communal Fund member, backed up by correspondence reviewed by The Intercept.
In December, Jordan Bollag, who uses the Jewish Communal Fund to organize his contributions, began making distributions from his accounts. As had always been the case, they all went through, except for the contribution to JVP, a progressive Jewish American group that criticizes Israeli human rights abuses against Palestinians.
Bollag assumed there must be some mistake — the money is effectively his, after all. He contacted the organization and eventually got a call back in January from Rachel Schnoll, the Jewish Communal Fund CEO.
Schnoll explained to Bollag that, in the wake of the October 7 attack on Israel and subsequent war on the Gaza Strip, there had been a policy change, and donors were no longer allowed to support JVP. (“I’m not going to comment on our grant-making, thanks,” Schnoll told The Intercept.)
“This is all just because JVP believes that everyone should have equal rights and a right to vote for the state that rules them — that’s it.”
That left Bollag in a jam, as he had already moved his money to the fund — since moving money in bulk to a donor-advised fund is the reason the funds exist in the first place.
“Jewish Communal Fund is blocking one of its Jewish fundholders from donating to Jewish Voice for Peace — how ironic is that?” Bollag told The Intercept. “And this is all just because JVP believes that everyone should have equal rights and a right to vote for the state that rules them — that’s it.”
A donor-advised fund is a philanthropic innovation that provides donors with significant tax advantages relative to their charitable contributions. By giving to a donor-advised fund, someone can immediately write off the entire amount of their donation, even while the money sits in the fund. When the donor has identified an organization they wish to support, the donor directs the fund to transfer the money, much as one would with a bank account.
Donor-advised funds generally serve as a pass-through entity and do not exert control over the funds parked in their accounts, though it is within their legal rights to do so, depending on their charter documents.
According to its tax documents, the Jewish Communal Fund recorded just under $1 billion in revenue in 2022.
In response to a request for comment, JVP said the organization had received other reports that the Jewish Communal Fund was blocking donations.
“Apartheid Communal Fund”
Schnoll told Bollag that JVP ran afoul of at least one of three criteria an organization must meet to be eligible for donations made through the Jewish Communal Fund. If an organization is antisemitic, denies Israel’s right to exist, or engages in illegal activity, it is ineligible, she explained.
JVP rejects Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish supremacist state — the group opposes Zionism, the ideological foundation of such a Jewish ethno-state — but not as a state in general. The group calls for a single state with universal civil and political rights for all, regardless of religion or ethnicity. (Bollag said that, as far as he knows, the Jewish Communal Fund does not restrict contributions from going to organizations involved with illegal settlements in the West Bank; Schnoll did not respond to a question regarding settlement donations.)
Schnoll told Bollag that if, for instance, he attempted to contribute to the American Nazi Party, such a gift would similarly be barred. She quickly added, Bollag said, that she did not mean to compare JVP and Nazis. Still, she said, the decision was final. The money was stuck.
Israel’s War on Gaza
The Jewish Communal Fund moves a lot of cash. After the March for Israel in Washington last November, Schnoll sent a letter to members — known as Fundholders — noting that more than $50 million had been passed through the group in support of Israel.
Before October 7, Bollag had successfully moved his money from the fund to JVP. He also made other regular contributions that touch on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, including to the organization IfNotNow — which, like JVP, is committed to equality, albeit while “grappling” with Zionism rather than explicitly opposing it — and the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund.
The donations to IfNotNow and PCRF went through even after October 7. Only Jewish Voice for Peace was forbidden.
“By shutting down Jews who support equal rights for all, Jewish Communal Fund is transgressing the Jewish values of debate and social justice,” Bollag said. “They should cease calling themselves Jewish Communal Fund and start going by Apartheid Communal Fund. I am currently exploring options to take my money out of JCF into a fund that is either unbiased or aligns with my values. I support a boycott of JCF until they change their policy.”
The post Billion-Dollar Jewish Communal Fund Bars Donations to Progressive Jewish Group appeared first on The Intercept.
Donors to Bob Menendez Legal Defense Linked to Ex-Terror Group
Sen. Robert Mendendez, D-N.J., is fighting charges that he accepted money in exchange for assisting foreign governments. That legal defense is being paid in part by donors with links to a former terrorist organization, a sign of the senator’s need for fast cash.
In September, federal prosecutors hit Menendez and his wife with a raft of bribery charges and, more recently, obstruction of justice. (Menendez and his wife pleaded not guilty to the charges.) With a trial scheduled for May, Menendez stands to rack up staggering legal fees. His legal defense fund, according to public disclosures, had already spent $373,223 as of the end of January.
Much of the cash in the fund — he has raised over $400,000 — comes from sources one might anticipate. New Jersey and New York donors with various business and political interests in his home state, including the real estate firm led by Jared Kushner’s family, have given the fund money. There are, however, many lesser-known donors. One is Ahmad Moeinimanesh, an electronic engineer from Northern California. Another is Hossein Afshari, also from California.
At first blush, these smaller contributions to Menendez Legal Defense Fund might appear to come from a smattering of individual donors. An analysis of the donor rolls by Responsible Statecraft and The Intercept, however, shows that about 15 percent of the people who gave to Menendez — including Moeinimanesh and Afshari — are linked to an Iranian exile group called the Mojahedin e-Khalq, or MEK.
Menendez and the MEK have a relationship going back a decade. Shortly after the group was removed from a State Department list of “foreign terror organizations,” Menendez advocated for the MEK following an attack on its members by the Iraqi government.
Menendez’s elevation of the group as a viable alternative to the Islamic Republic continued since then. The senator met with its leader, Maryam Rajavi, last May and heaped praise on the National Council of Resistance of Iran, a so-called political wing indistinguishable from the MEK, at a 2022 Capitol Hill event organized by the Organization of Iranian American Communities, a group allied with the MEK.
“Let me start off by thanking the Organization of Iranian Communities for putting together today’s event on Capitol Hill,” said Menendez. “I’m thrilled to see so many Iranian Americans from across the country, and I’d like to thank and recognize the National Council of Resistance of Iran for their commitment to elevating your voices, the voices of Iranians inside of Iran and constantly advocating for the freedom of the Iranian people.”
“He is a man with principle and integrity and I don’t believe all of the negative things some media put out.”
Moeinimanesh, the chair of OIAC’s California chapter, who contributed $2,500, was one of a dozen Iranian Americans with links to the MEK or its affiliates that gave to Menendez’s fund. (Neither Moeinimanesh nor OIAC responded to a request for comment.) Afshari gave $1,000. “Giving money to people I think are nice is not illegal,” Afshari told Responsible Statecraft and The Intercept, of his contributions to Menendez’s legal fund. “He is a man with principle and integrity and I don’t believe all of the negative things some media put out.”
In total, MEK-affiliated individuals made up approximately 5 percent of the total funds raised, over $20,000, by the end of January. (Seven other donors, the National Council of Resistance of Iran, the OIAC, and Menendez’s office did not respond to requests for comment.)
Responsible Statecraft and The Intercept established links between the MEK and most of these donors by cross-referencing their names with signatories on OIAC and National Council of Resistance of Iran letters and affiliations. Court records linked Afshari to the MEK.
Menendez and the MEK
Menendez’s perch atop the Senate Foreign Relations Committee made him one of the most influential Democrats on foreign policy. He was an attractive friend for Egypt, one of the two foreign governments now accused of bribing him for political favors. The dramatic federal indictment claimed cash, gold, and expensive gifts from Egypt were linked to a weapons sale and the release of a hold on $300 million in aid to Cairo. An updated indictment in January alleged that Menendez also accepted Formula One tickets and other gifts from Qatar in exchange for favors.
The sway Menendez held in Washington — and his hawkish stances on Iran — also made him a valuable ally for the MEK. The group had made an arduous journey from its early days as a student-run radical Marxist group in the late 1960s. Anti-monarchists, the MEK fought on the winning side of the 1979 Iranian Revolution but faced a crackdown as the young Islamic Republic consolidated power. Forced into exile, the MEK fought on the Iraqi side of the Iran–Iraq War in the 1980s, giving rise to antipathy against the group inside its home country.
The exile in Iraq also brought an inward turn, leading the Rand Corporation to conclude that the MEK, due to its aggrandizement of its late-leader Massoud Rajavi and his wife, Maryam, was a “cult.” Human Rights Watch, Rand, and The Intercept have reported that MEK leaders abused group members’ human rights.
In 1997, the MEK was placed on the State Department’s list of foreign terrorist organizations for, among other things, its role in the killing of six Americans in Iran in the 1970s and an attempted attack on the Iranian mission to the United Nations in 1992. The designation would last for a decade and a half. Following a successful lobbying campaign by its supporters in the U.S., the group won a major victory when it was removed from the American terror rolls in 2012.
The shift in the U.S. stance meant American politicians, including Menendez, could grow close to the militant outfit without controversy about the terror label. Prominent figures were more regularly seen speaking at the group’s annual conference outside Paris, casting the MEK and Maryam Rajavi as a viable political force within Iran if the Islamic Republic were overthrown. The appearances were often well remunerated; former Vice President Mike Pence, for example, received $430,000 from the MEK following the end of the Trump administration.
Though he had been quiet on the MEK while it was designated as a terror organization, once it was delisted Menendez consistently expressed concern for the group and its members. In 2013, the MEK began a frantic lobbying push in Washington after its encampment in Iraq — the former base from which it mounted military attacks — came under attack from Iranian-backed groups; the Iraqi government, which was close to Iran, was unwilling or unable to guarantee MEK members’ security.
Menendez, a top recipient of campaign contributions from donors with ties to the MEK, stepped in. A month after the attack, he held up a sale of Apache helicopters to Iraq that were meant to be part of efforts to push back the Islamic State group. Speaking at a 2014 MEK rally in Paris, Menendez said, “I told Prime Minister Maliki” — Nouri al-Maliki, of Iraq — “in person last year that his commitment to the safety and security of the MEK members at Camp Liberty is a critical factor in my future support for any assistance to Iraq.”
Menendez has continued to address MEK convenings and speaks about the group in terms hinting at accepting its self-image as a government-in-exile. And he is quick to point out that he is a friend to the MEK. In a video message to the OIAC in 2021, Menendez wished the group a happy Nowruz, the Persian New Year, and reiterated his support for their work. “You know, that you have friends in Congress and throughout the U.S. government, as well as a host of international NGOs who will continue to shine a light on these abuses” — by the Iranian government — “and continue to press for accountability,” Menendez said. “We will continue highlighting the plight of Iran’s people at the regime’s expense.”
Now, Menendez also appears to have friends among the MEK who are willing to help him with his plight — at their own expense.
The post Donors to Bob Menendez Legal Defense Linked to Ex-Terror Group appeared first on The Intercept.
The darkening prospect of mass destruction on earth
The ailing nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty requires ‘effective measures’ to regain its health, writes Dr Marianne Hanson, Co-Chair of ICAN Australia. Last week marked the 54th anniversary of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The treaty was designed to freeze the number of states with nuclear weapons – beyond the five countries that had already developed these Continue reading »
US can’t beat China, so it should join it in the EV revolution
Efforts to keep Chinese electric vehicles out of the US will only hurt American consumers and manufacturers in the long run. Instead, the Biden administration should embrace learning from Chinese carmakers to improve innovation and competitiveness. In the United States, sharp disagreements exist over numerous critical national issues. However, there is bipartisan consensus on reducing Continue reading »
The Left Is Finally Building a Response to AIPAC
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.
Now, progressives are 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 Action— 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.
In a press release announcing its launch, the coalition said it would work to “organize Democratic voters and elected officials to reject the destructive influence of the Republican megadonor-backed AIPAC on the Democratic primary process and our government’s policy towards Palestine and Israel.”
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.
Israel’s War on Gaza
AIPAC recruited and is bankrolling a challenger to Rep. Jamaal Bowman, D-N.Y., for instance, 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 parties 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, The Intercept reported.
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.”
The post The Left Is Finally Building a Response to AIPAC appeared first on The Intercept.