Left-wing organisations launch a coalition to push back against AIPAC’s influence amid the US-backed war on Gaza.
Washington, DC – Prominent progressive organisations in the United States are joining together to push back against the political and electoral influence of the country’s most powerful pro-Israel lobby group, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).
More than 20 advocacy groups launched on Monday a formal coalition dubbed “Reject AIPAC” to organise against what they called AIPAC’s campaign to silence the “growing dissent in Congress” against Israel’s war on Gaza.
The newly formed coalition cited reports that AIPAC is readying a $100m offensive through its electoral arms – AIPAC PAC and the United Democracy Project (UDP) – to take on a handful of progressives in Congress who called for a ceasefire in Gaza early in the war.
“Rejecting AIPAC is a crucial step in putting voters back at the center of our democracy,” the coalition said in a statement.
While individual candidates and organisations have previously criticised AIPAC’s involvement in US election campaigns, the coalition marks a collective and focused effort against the pro-Israel group.
Reject AIPAC includes mainstream left-wing groups, such as Justice Democrats and the Working Families Party, as well as organisations focused on Palestinian rights, including the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights Action, Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) Action and the IfNotNow Movement.
Beth Miller, political director at JVP Action, said the show of unity by progressive groups is “incredibly significant”.
She added that the coalition represents “a unified response” by the US political left “to the threat that AIPAC poses both to the work that progressive groups are building here at home and to Palestinian lives in Palestine”.
AIPAC, which is officially non-partisan, advocates unconditional US support for Israel and pushes back against any criticism of Israeli governments and their human rights record. The group’s uncompromising advocacy for Israel has also persisted unabashedly as Israeli politics tilted further to the right, with the current government waging the war on Gaza often described as the most far-right cabinet in Israeli history.
In the US, progressives say AIPAC’s targeting of left-wing candidates often advances right-wing priorities at home.
The anti-AIPAC coalition’s strategy, as outlined by its launch statement, is to back progressives targeted by AIPAC with an ad campaign, lobby against the group’s agenda in Congress and call on Democrats to renounce it.
And so, Reject AIPAC is urging politicians to sign a pledge against AIPAC support.
“For decades, [AIPAC] has been a hawkish, warmongering, and bullying force in US politics,” the pledge reads.
The coalition’s strategy
“AIPAC advocates for a US foreign policy directly at odds with human rights and international humanitarian law, and has supported an unconditional flow of US military funding and weapons to the Israeli government that have been used to support human rights violations against Palestinians.”
Long known as one of the most powerful special interest groups in Washington, AIPAC had formally stayed out of direct electioneering until 2022, when it formed a political action committee and an accompanying so-called “super PAC” to thwart the election of Israel critics.
AIPAC did not return media’s request for comment by the time of publication.
While AIPAC mostly focused on open seats in the last election cycle, it now appears to be gearing up to target incumbents, with key progressives in the House of Representatives in its crosshairs.
Progressives have been decrying the brute force of AIPAC’s election spending, which is partly fuelled by right-wing donors who have backed former President Donald Trump and other conservatives.
The pro-Israel lobby organisation has also endorsed dozens of Republicans in Congress, including many who refused to certify President Joe Biden’s election victory in 2020.
Usamah Andrabi, spokesperson for Justice Democrats, said many groups in the coalition have already been working against AIPAC and its “right-wing influence in Congress”.
“We wanted to come together to not only be more organised but to organise the Democratic Party, its voters and elected officials to once and for all reject the disruptive influence of the Republican mega donor-backed AIPAC on the Democratic primary process and our government’s policy towards Palestine and Israel,” Andrabi told media.
For a while, progressive Democrats had been on the offensive electorally. In 2018, Justice Democrats-backed Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, then 28 years old, defeated a top House Democrat who had been in office for nearly 20 years, shaking the party’s establishment.
That same year, Muslim-American progressives Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar were also elected to Congress. So was Ayanna Pressley, completing the so-called “Squad” of left-wing congresswomen.
Two years later, Cori Bush and Jamaal Bowman also successfully primaried powerful incumbent Democrats, growing the progressive base in Congress.
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