AIPAC has unveiled a new ad stressing the fact that the group is an American organization.
“You may have heard our name, but how much do you really know about AIPAC?,” the commercial asks.
“Funded by Americans. Directed by Americans. Strengthening an alliance that benefits America!,” declares a tweet promoting the ad.
AIPAC generally portrays itself as an omnipotent force able to stomp out any political campaign that dares to stray from the party line, but this ad clearly shows they are suddenly on the defensive.
The lobbying outfit has long known that it’s unpopular among Democratic voters, which is why it never actually references Israel in the ads that it runs in Democratic primaries. It’s why the Super PAC it uses in Democratic races is called the United Democracy Project (ADP), an innocuous sounding name that doesn’t clue viewers in to AIPAC’s actual motivations.
AIPAC didn’t have much reason to be concerned about the right side of the aisle, but recent polling shows that younger Republicans are growing skeptical of Israel, like everyone else. The numbers indicate that the shift has been driven, in part, by the genocide in Gaza.
For instance, a March 2025 Pew Poll found that 50% of GOP voters under the age of 50 now express a negative view of Israel, compared to 35% in 2022.
The American Right’s relationship with Israel is a subject that went mainstream in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s murder, amid online debates about whether the conservative pundit was turning on the country and potentially facing backlash over it.
A number of “America First” conservative commentators have openly criticized the special relationship. Chief among them is Tucker Carlson, a popular voice that formerly parroted the usual neoconservative talking points.
Over the summer, a Carlson interview with Ted Cruz went viral because he repeatedly pressed the Texas Senator on the issue of Israel. One of the questions that flummoxed Cruz was, Why don’t AIPAC lobbyists have to register as foreign agents?
We certainly haven’t seen any discernible changes among GOP lawmakers, but Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene is an outlier. The Georgia Representative has criticized her own party over its loyalty to Israel, and has referred to what’s happening in Gaza as a genocide.
In August, AIPAC sent out a fundraising email targeting Greene. “You expect anti-Israel smears from Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, but now, Marjorie Taylor Greene has joined their ranks – spouting the same vile rhetoric and voting against the US-Israel alliance,” it read.
In a fiery tweet, Greene attacked the group over the email.
“While AIPAC is lying to their donors about me claiming I’m ‘betraying my American values’ the REALITY is AIPAC 1,000,000% serves and lobbies for a foreign country, Israel!!,” she wrote.
The Republican establishment is taking this stuff seriously. Last month, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) held a private meeting with pro-Israel groups (including AIPAC) about the need to eradicate growing isolationist sentiment within the party.
“The right-wing awakening is a big problem for the Israel lobby,” wrote Phil Weiss in a recent piece on our site. “It has lost traction in the Democratic Party because the base despises Israel, and candidates such as Zohran Mamdani are running against Israeli genocide, and a growing faction of politicians seeks to end military aid to the apartheid country.”
October 7 bill
Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) used the recent anniversary of October 7 to promote something called the October 7th Remembrance Education Act (PDF).
The bill, which is endorsed by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), is currently backed by 16 Democrats and 4 Republicans.
Gottheimer is also calling on the New Jersey state legislature to introduce and pass a state version of the bill.
According to a press release, the legislation would “instruct the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum to build a model curriculum for schools to teach the heinous and brutal attacks committed on October 7th, the history of antisemitism and how it played a role in the attacks, and denial and distortion as a form of antisemitism in the wake of the attacks.”
In other words, the bill aims to stifle criticism of Israel in the classroom. These lawmakers don’t want people talking about the genocide that prompted college students to act. They want people to know that “antisemitism and anti-Israel rhetoric
spread throughout the United States and on campuses” after October 7.
In a press conference, Gottheimer openly connected the bill to his anti-BDS efforts and attempts to push the controversial IHRA working definition of antisemitism.
“I’m fighting to pass my bipartisan Antisemitism Awareness Act to give schools the tools they need to confront antisemitism wherever it rears its ugly head,” he explained. “This will codify into law the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism — the most widely recognized definition of antisemitism in the world. The bill will also require the Department of Education to apply the IHRA’s definition of antisemitism when carrying out Title VI investigations. And, I’ve also called for our state legislature to adopt similar legislation to codify IHRA here in Jersey. They’ve been dragging their feet for way too long.”
“We can’t sit around and wait as our Jewish residents continue to face threats, intimidation, and calls for the annihilation of the State of Israel,” he continued. “We cannot stay silent in the face of hate and bigotry online, on our college campuses, or anywhere in our nation. Our Jersey Values mean that we don’t allow our communities to be torn apart; we stand together and protect one another. That’s exactly what we are doing here today.”
Odds & Ends
🇵🇸 Trump ignores Palestinians in Knesset speech intended as a victory lap for the Gaza war
🚫 Brandeis Center threatens to sue film workers over Israel boycott
😮 She was taken hostage by Palestinians 55 years ago. Now she’s an anti-Zionist activist.
⛪ Responsible Statecraft: Israel wants to pay US pastors a stipend to spread the word
🪧 The Guardian: Right to protest is under sustained attack in the west, report finds
📺 Counterpunch: Palestinians’ Fate: Victims of Genocide While Alive, Vastly Uncounted By the Media When They Are Killed
🏛️ The Nation: The Congressional Black Caucus’s Silent Partnership With AIPAC
🤝 ABC News: Trump vows to disarm Hamas but won’t say how, avoids details on what’s next for Gaza
🎸 Raw Story: Mike Huckabee jams on stage to controversial version of ‘Sweet Home Alabama’
👀 New York Times: Trump Calls for Israel’s President to Pardon Netanyahu. Could It Happen?
💰 Truthout: From AI to TikTok to TV, This Pro-Israel Billionaire Is Expanding Power in US
💬 Middle East Eye: Steve Witkoff denies he is stepping back from Trump administration following Gaza deal
✊ Democrat & Chronicle: 6 University of Rochester students launch hunger strike over Gaza conflict
🏫 Los Angeles Times: Israel and Hamas have a ceasefire deal. But college protesters say activism won’t stop
Re: “I’m fighting to pass my bipartisan Antisemitism Awareness Act to give schools the tools they need to confront antisemitism wherever it rears its ugly head,” he explained. “This will codify into law the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism — the most widely recognized definition of antisemitism in the world.”
I still think that Orthodox Judaism has a Covenant against making graven images. So it confuses me when B’nai B’rith commissioned a pro-slavery, ex-Confederate soldier to make an idol of the Roman Goddess Libertas herself wearing a “pileus” cap, symbol of freedom for former slaves, and installed it in front of the National Museum of American Jewish History. Because, if public displsys of idolitry is not antisemitic, just WTF is according to this International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition? The B’nai B’rith Goddess of Freedom obviously opposes non-observers of Israeli Zionism from exercising equal rights here in the USA, where that is a minimum legal requirement.
So AIPAC may need to move to another Country, or get used to this one respecting everyone else’s rights. This Country already ratified the clauses in the US Constitution that explicitly prohibited any religious tests for our public school officials and don’t allow them, or our Congressional representatives to ever make any laws whatsoever establishing a Jewish Zionist religion over the objections of non-religious, or anti-Zionist American citizens, taxpayers, voters, and legal alien residents who reject your authoritarian dogmatic bullshit. This proposal is patently un-Constitutional, Illegal, Immoral, and Un-American from the outset.
I’d add this to Odd & Ends:
Since 7 October 2023, one investigation after another has shown that the Israeli state has been using techniques of dehumanisation on the people of Palestine: torture, rape and humiliation, collective punishment, displacement, internment in camps and forced disappearances…The thousands of Palestinians arbitrarily detained since October 2023 under the Israeli law on the “detention of illegal combatants” enacted in December of that same year, were subjected to attacks by dogs, beatings and sexual assaults. In August of that same year, the Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem published its report “Welcome to Hell”, confirming the “systematic, widespread and protracted use of torture.”…Experts appointed by the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have also collected many eye-witness reports which tell of detainees locked in cages or tied to beds, naked or wearing diapers. They are also subjected to techniques of sensory deprivation, and deprived of medical care, sleep, food and water. They are also suspended from the ceiling, subjected to water-boarding, and burning with cigarettes or electric shocks, particularly on the genitals….
Gaza.Two Centuries of Colonial Campaigns Continued – <span lang=”fr”>Mathieu Rigouste</span>
Michael,
You wrote,
“The lobbying outfit has long known that it’s unpopular among Democratic voters, which is why it never actually references Israel in the ads that it runs in Democratic primaries. It’s why the Super PAC it uses in Democratic races is called the United Democracy Project (ADP), an innocuous sounding name that doesn’t clue viewers in to AIPAC’s actual motivations.”
Breitbart News was weird like that. Andrew Breitbart said that he founded Breitbart News decades ago in order to fight what he claimed was the mass media having an anti-Israeli slant. There’s a photo of A. Breitbart and other B.N. founders sitting at a table with Net. However, when I checked around 2020 for B.N. website articles on the topic, I found that they ran practically no content directly on the topic. Instead, its articles focused a lot on the misdeeds of Hispanic, Muslim, and Arabic immigrants in the US, Canada, and Western Europe, along with liberal policies that they criticized like lax immigration and liberal politicians. From what I could tell, B.N. was trying to build up a right wing anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim populist political base in the US. It presented itself as “alternative” non-mainstream news, attracting Americans understandably disenchanted with the national situation and corporate mass media. Steve Bannon from B.N. went on to become Trump’s chief of staff at one point, and I know at least one person who was an avid Trump supporter who was a pretty constant, practically daily avid B.N. reader and comment-poster.
One of my criticisms of B.N.’s messaging was that it presented itself as “alternative”, but it was actually at root another faction of the establishment narrative. Let’s say that B.N. correctly criticized the US government for wrongly allowing in illegal immigrants unsupervised. Even in that case, it practically didn’t get into the issues like whether US big businesses want low wage undocumented labor, and that corporate desires for low wage labor was a big factor in allowing illegal immigration. Instead, B.N. presented the reason for illigal immigration as being liberal cultural ideas. And for instance B.N. wasn’t going to complain about right wing Globalist economics that made Hispanics want to leave Third World countries. Its messaging comes across to me as xenophobic, but the messaging from B.N.’s faction seemed to be that the problem was immigrants’ “culture”, not their race. (continued)
Michael,
To continue my point about Breitbart News’ silence on Isr. issues, I can only guess that the reason why B.N. rarely got into the topic directly despite having it as a founding purpose would be that it felt that the topic would alienate its readership. My guess is that they were trying to appeal to and develop an exclusivist culture-wars following, and that promoting Isr. politics on their site would alienate some of their readers. Those exclusivist readers would see the Isr. state culturally as part of the “Other”, and so promoting exclusivist cultural politics together with openly promoting the state wouldn’t work for a lot of that faction.
I don’t exactly know the answer why B.N. rarely touched the issue, but that’s my best guess. It relates to what you said about why AIPAC wasn’t making Isr. politics a big part of its messaging in those Democratic Party Primary election campaigns. Had AIPAC just openly announced that the candidate was bad because he/she opposed Isr. warfare in Gaza, the messaging would fall pretty flat.
This also goes to Mondoweiss’s articles on Kirk’s, Carlson’s, and Marjorie Taylor Greene’s stances on the topic, and why they can appeal to younger conservatives criticizing the Special Relationship.
I can only guess what the reason might be. It could be that there’s an internal contradiction that leads to distancing in relations. Suppose that the Trump faction, which B.N. and Aldeson helped create, focus a lot on isolationism, even putting tariffs on Canada and Australia. That same isolationist approach could make it harder for Net. to campaign openly in the US as part of Trump’s agenda, as he is a foreign leader.
Or alternately it could be that Americans got tired of Middle East interventions and wars over the last 24 years, and that war-tiredness also affects younger conservatives.
I goes without saying that TikTok has changed its algorithm and the new Zionist owners no longer recommend or refer content from Breaking Point and other creators who criticize Israel. The crickets on Sunday from the major network news sites about Trumps AI cartoon of him flying a jet wearing a crown and bombing protesters with crap was a ludicrous programming decision.Trump will file lawsuits against them whether they do, or do not, choose to comment on his tirades and antics.