The Shift: AIPAC targets former ally in New Jersey

How will AIPAC adapt to the upcoming elections now that it’s broadly unpopular with the American public?

We are already getting some answers in New Jersey, where the lobbying group is targeting Tom Malinowski.

Malinowski is running to represent New Jersey’s 11th district. He’s a former Representative and a former AIPAC ally. Just a few years ago, the group listed him as one of their featured candidates. He is a consistent supporter of Israel and he opposes the BDS movement.

However, AIPAC is reportedly spending $2 million on attack ads targeting Malinowski. His crime? Suggesting that military aid to Israel be conditioned.

“Tom Malinowski is talking about conditioning aid to Israel,” Patrick Dorton, a spokesman for AIPAC’s Super PAC United Democracy Project (UDP), told the New York Times. “That’s not a pro-Israel position.”

“I committed one sin in their minds,” says Malinowski. “I was not willing to tell them that I would unconditionally, unquestionably, blindly support any request for assistance that Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel might make. That position puts me in the mainstream, not just of all Americans, but of the Jewish and pro-Israel community in this country. They’re not willing to say, ‘I’ll do anything without thinking.’”

Of course, AIPAC can’t actually run ads telling Democratic voters to reject Malinowski for being insufficiently pro-Israel, as the base has completely soured on the country, the U.S.’s longstanding relationship with the country, and lobbying groups supporting that relationship.

So, the AIPAC-funded ads attack Malinowski for allegedly supporting Trump’s immigration policies. The allegation stems from a 2019 vote, in which That year, Congress passed a funding bill that included money for law enforcement at the southern border. Most Democrats, including Malinowski, backed the package.

“I would absolutely not vote for a DHS funding bill without restrictions on what ICE is doing right now,” Malinowski recently told the New Jersey Globe. “I would defund any operations with masked agents, any operations where they’re picking people up without warrants, branding people based on their ethnicity or their accent, any operations at schools, churches, hospitals.”

“If their definition of pro-Israel now excludes mainstream Democrats like me, the number of pro-Israel people in America will become so small it will be nonexistent,” he also noted.

There’s another interesting element to this story.

Jeremy Ben-Ami, president of the liberal Zionist group J Street, recently published a column where he expressed concern over the attacks. Ben-Ami is worried that this wave of attack ads could backfire and impair the United States’ connection to Israel.

“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,” he warns. “It 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.”

“In fact, this approach 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,” Ben-Ami continues.

Alarming, indeed.

ICE Democrats

Earlier this month, seven Democrats joined the GOP to pass a government funding package that includes $64 billion more for the DHS and $10 billion more for ICE. Less than two days after the vote, 37-year-old ICU nurse Alex Pretti was murdered by ICE agents.

The yes votes were cast by Representatives Henry Cuellar (Texas), Vicente Gonzalez (Texas), Laura Gillen (New York), Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (Washington), Jared Golden (Maine), Don Davis (North Carolina), and Tom Suozzi (New York).

Suozzi immediately began backtracking after Pretti was killed.

“I hear the anger from many of my constituents, and I take responsibility for that,” Suozzi wrote. “I have long been critical of ICE’s unlawful behavior and I must do a better job demonstrating that.

The New York Congress member was targeted by activists at a town hall this week, with one protester handing him a diaper.

“I wanted to get something for you: This is an adult diaper for when you pee yourself in front of Donald Trump,” one told him. “You can wear this, it’s really nice. You’re the type of leader we need right now, someone who soils himself when the fascists are at our door.”

As AIPAC Tracker notes, all these Democrats are also enthusiastic supporters of Israel and AIPAC recipients.

“It is no coincidence that the seven Democrats who voted to guarantee funding for ICE’s occupation of American cities are all on the AIPAC payroll, having received over $8.1 million from the pro-Israel lobby,” wrote the group on Instagram.

“But Americans don’t want representatives serving foreign governments or corrupt contractors,” the post continued. “We want them to serve us.”