Ha'aretz: AIPAC Is Desperate

Time to close up shop

A Desperate AIPAC Misdiagnoses the Source of Israel’s U.S. Popularity Problem

An email to donors highlighting two Democratic Senate candidates as ‘direct threats’ to the Israel-U.S. relationship shows just how detached from reality the pro-Israel lobby has become

Etan Nechin

FROM HA’ARETZ

In a fundraising email to donors on Tuesday, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee warned of a “coordinated, well-funded effort to punish [sic] anyone who stands with Israel,” which is “gaining ground fast.”

The email singled out Abdul El-Sayed and Graham Platner, two progressive firebrands and rising Democratic nominees for the Senate who, according to AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby group, “aren’t just critics of Israel, but are running campaigns built on undermining it.”

Platner, an insurgent Democratic Senate candidate, has emerged as the party’s frontrunner in Maine after Governor Janet Mills withdrew from the race. El-Sayed, a physician and former Detroit health official, is running in the Democratic Party’s primary for Senate in August.

Both have not minced words on Israel.

Platner, a 41-year-old Marine veteran and oyster farmer, has positioned himself as an anti-establishment candidate and has frequently bashed Trump’s foreign policy and Israel’s war in Gaza. He has described the conflict as a genocide and said he would not accept funding from AIPAC.

He’s also drawn backlash over a Nazi-themed tattoo, which he has now covered up. The Jewish Democratic Council has said it’s “not ready” to endorse him, because he “doesn’t represent the views and values of the majority of American Jews.”

El-Sayed, 41, the son of Egyptian immigrants, said last month that the Israeli government is as “evil” as Hamas. He also drew criticism after a car-ramming attack on a Michigan synagogue, when he said of the attacker – whose brother had been killed days earlier in an Israeli strike in Lebanon after being identified as a Hezbollah commander by the IDF – that “hurt people hurt people.”

AIPAC accused both candidates of embracing “extreme rhetoric,” pushing “false accusations of genocide” and supporting cutting off aid to Israel, policies “pushed by Bernie Sanders and amplified by voices like [left-wing political streamer] Hasan Piker.”

“This isn’t a disagreement on policy. It’s a direct threat to the U.S.-Israel relationship,” the email read.

It should be noted that while Abdul El-Sayed and Platner are both critics of Israel, some of El-Sayed’s statements have not sat easily even with some progressives. But AIPAC’s email collapses them both into extreme “anti-Israel” candidates, erasing context and nuance – precisely the point of AIPAC’s logic.

U.S. public opinion critical of Israel isn’t “driven by the far-left fringe of American politics,” as AIPAC claims in its letter. It is driven by Americans, who, after two and a half years of wars, including two in Iran, have come to conclusions no amount of advocacy can override.

In a September poll, only 47 percent of Americans said backing Israel is in the U.S. national interest, down from 69 percent in 2023. In February, a poll for the first time found more Americans were more sympathetic toward Palestinians than Israelis. Support for conditioning or cutting aid to Israel, once controversial, has become increasingly mainstream.

Platner and El-Sayed, like other progressive candidates, aren’t the source of Israel’s popularity problem in the United States, nor are they the real threat. They are symptoms of a deeper shift in American public opinion.

That shift is reflected in establishment Democrats such as Chuck Schumer and Rahm Emanuel, who have expressed support for Platner and candidates like him – something they declined to do in the past with Bernie Sanders, and even more recently with New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

For years, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu worked to turn Israel into a partisan issue in U.S. politics, narrowing “pro-Israel” to an alliance between American and Israeli right-wingers. Now, as that strategy appears to have backfired, he himself has called to “phase out” U.S. aid.

AIPAC’s argument that Platner, El-Sayed and Piker are an extreme “direct threat” to the U.S.–Israel relationship shows not only how out of touch it is with Americans, but also with the relationship it claims to defend.