Maryland’s 4th
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. A Democratic candidate gets out to a sizable lead against a seemingly weak candidate in the primary before pro-Israel lobbying groups descend on the district and spend millions of dollars. The ads they run don’t mention at Israel at all, but they’re effective and soon enough the original frontrunner is vulnerable.
Earlier this year AIPAC was able to cut down Summer Lee’s 25-point lead in Pennsylvania’s 12th District and very nearly cost her the race. They spent a few million dollars (through their ironically titled United Democracy Project Super PAC) to prop up a local lawyer and former Republican staffer named Steve Irwin. Lee had drawn the ire of groups like AIPAC and DMFI (who spent $400,000 on the race) for saying some positive things about the BDS movement, expressing support for the conditioning of military aid, and criticizing Israel on Twitter during the most recent bombing of Gaza. In the end, Lee prevailed by less than a point.
In Maryland’s 4th district AIPAC doubled its efforts, spending nearly $6 million to stop ex-congresswoman Donna Edwards. This time it worked, as a former prosecutor and lobbyist named Glenn Ivey prevailed in the Democratic primary this week. Ivey had run for the seat twice before and failed both times. Edwards has been a target of organizations like AIPAC for awhile, as she’s voted the wrong way on some bills involving Israel and Iran. She’s also visited Gaza and signed a letter denouncing the blockade. In contrast, Ivey is a staunch supporter of Israel or, at least, he will become one. In an interview with Jewish Insider last year he seemed to be harboring at least a couple doubts. “Iron Dome is aimed at protecting civilians, which is reasonable to me, but I thought sort of a byproduct of it was that the Israeli military doesn’t have to be as aggressive,” he told the website. “I think there’s a fair debate about whether the military was excessive in some ways. I don’t know. I’ve heard arguments on both sides about it.” One assumes such reservations are now extinguished.
After Ivey’s victory AIPAC declared that being “pro-Israel is both good policy and good politics.” This is a very blatant lie. If Democratic voters loved Israel so much the group would have mentioned the country in their ads. AIPAC knows it has no chance against its biggest enemies, lawmakers like Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib who have destroyed every primary challenger since joining the House. Instead AIPAC chooses to spend millions defending the center. It’s not that people like Lee and Edwards are suddenly going to come out in support of armed Palestinian resistance, it’s that they’ll occasionally question the apartheid regime or promote the human rights of Palestinian children. Every new letter to the administration or cosponsor on the Betty McCollum bill moves the needle a little more and AIPAC fears something seismic is going to erupt one day.
There’s two ways to look at what happened in Maryland. One is the glass half full way. More and more mainstream Democrats are coming around on the idea that AIPAC is bad. Presidential candidates don’t feel compelled to attend their annual conference anymore and even some moderate Dems don’t like the fact they endorsed a whole bunch of January 6th Republicans. The damage to their brand means AIPAC has to spend more and more money. They just ran through $6 million to protect one measly House seat. The group is obviously loaded, but what happens as more and more Israel critics run for office? How many holes can you plug simultaneously as the boat begins to sink?
As for the glass half empty take, I can’t do a better job breaking it down than Austin Ahlman did in The Intercept yesterday. Ahlman points out that Edwards was backed by Democratic establishment figures like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton. She even gained support from Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren. She also received money from the liberal Zionist group J Street, but they obviously can’t keep up with AIPAC and only spent a little over $700,000. Here’s Ahlman’s analysis:
Edwards’s loss is a wake-up call to Democratic leadership, whose support went beyond mere endorsements. Despite her longtime progressive positioning, Edwards maintained strong relationships with party leaders during her time in Congress and rarely bucked the party line. Last month, Pelosi returned that favor by recording a video directly responding to the claims AIPAC made against Edwards in the bulk of their advertisements. For Pelosi, a staunch AIPAC ally who rarely strays from the group’s extreme positions, the move was remarkable. Pelosi’s office did not immediately respond to The Intercept’s request for comment.
Progressive candidates have, in some cases, managed to notch wins in the face of the aggressive push by AIPAC and its allies — most notably Summer Lee, who narrowly overcame millions of dollars in attack ads in her race against attorney Steve Irwin in Pennsylvania. But the massive spending campaigns seeking to thwart those candidacies have left progressive organizations, whose resources are dwarfed by the millions AIPAC appears capable of marshaling on demand, with little choice but to pick their battles carefully. In Nina Turner’s recent challenge against Ohio Rep. Shontel Brown, for example, Turner’s former backers at Justice Democrats said they couldn’t take her campaign on this cycle: They’d been “massively outgunned” by Republican donors and the Israel lobby.
After the loss Edwards tweeted a Guardian article about AIPAC’s spending on Twitter and wrote, “My take: The world is not a better place when people who believe in peace and human rights are crushed.”
She then followed up with this: “Antisemitism has a very specific definition that is clothed in hate. The word is an affront and offense when used indiscriminately to describe a difference of policy and/or critique of government. I am offended for all of us when that word is used to describe me.”
Stand With the Six
It’s been 9 months since Israel declared that six Palestinian human rights groups were connected to terrorists. The government offered no proof for these claims at the time and all investigations into the matter have shown that the charge is ridiculous.
Recently 21 House members sent the Biden administration a letter about the issue. “The U.S. must always and consistently speak out against efforts by all countries attempting to undermine civil society and the necessary work of humanitarian organizations,” reads the letter, which was led by Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA). “Counter-terrorism legislation must not be applied to legitimate human rights and humanitarian activities. Furthermore, repressive tactics such as criminalizing organizations must not be used to suppress or deny the right to freedom of association, or to quash political dissent, or limit the peaceful activities of civil society.”
A week prior to this nine EU countries released a joint statement rejecting the designation and pledging continued cooperation with the groups.
Israel says they dropped off their alleged evidence to the White House. Nine months later Biden has absolutely nothing to say about the issue, but it’s very clear that the administration wants the whole thing to go away. The story faded from the mainstream media (the Pressley letter was barely covered), but has yet to die in the State Department’s briefing room where Ned Price is asked about it on a semi-regular basis. This week he was forced to talk about it twice and this whole saga is getting increasingly ridiculous as he has to make it seem like the Biden team is diligently pouring over thousands of documents.
“That look is ongoing,” said Price. “The last time we talked about this, I made the point that our Israeli partners have presented us with the predicate for their decision. That information was shared with the State Department. We in turn have shared it with partners throughout the interagency. We’ve discussed this with other partners around the world as well, including some of those who have come out with their own determination, but I don’t have an update for you in terms of where that stands.”
When asked when the administration will actually determine whether the evidence is real or fake, Price offered this amazing line: “Well, what I would say right now is that it is never a matter of closing the book.”
Never! We are going to pretend to be looking at all this for another 2-6 years. Price was asked about the “investigation” again the next day. “I’m not in a position to put a firm time frame on it,” he reiterated. “What I can say – and I think you know this – we have not on our part designated any of these six NGOs. We have not funded any of these groups. We have long designated the PFLP as a foreign terrorist organization since 1997, I believe it was. But when it comes to these groups, we have neither funded nor designated any of them.”
And so the official position on this from the Biden administration has seemingly emerged and it’s in line with a lot of their other stances on Israeli matters. They’re not saying Israel is right, but they’re certainly not going to come out and say they’re wrong. Recall this crew’s pathetic position on the murder of Shireen Abu Akleh: she was killed by an IDF bullet but no one is actually to blame for her death.
Odds & Ends
? During a speech at the Christians United for Israel (CUFI) summit Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) previewed plans for anti-BDS legislation that would prevent the U.S. military from contracting with any companies that boycott. Do we think there’s a lot of BDS-supporting military contractors out there?
?? Maureen Clare Murphy in Electronic Intifada: ‘Biden helps Israel get away with murder’
?? “After hearing Joe Biden identify Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and concede a two-state solution seemed ‘far away’, one Palestinian official gave a blunt assessment of the US president’s visit to the region. ‘It’s like the Trump years with a smile.'”
✝️ Retired pastor Jeff Wright is on the site writing about how U.S. church leaders view Biden’s Middle East trip as a missed opportunity.
? A progressive Jewish group is backing a congressional candidate in New York’s 10th district who supports BDS. Rep. Yuh-Line Niou, who expressed support for the movement recently, is now backed by The Jewish Vote. Former NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio recently dropped out of the 10th district race.
?? Shireen Abu Akleh’s cousin, Jennifer Zacharia, has a powerful piece in the Boston Review on the killing and U.S. deference to Israel.
?️ Check out the latest episode of the Mondoweiss podcast where we have a roundtable discussion on Biden’s trip.
Stay safe out there,
Michael
