With Key Allies of Israel in Trouble as the Election Draws Near, AIPAC Speeds Cash Into Congressional Campaign Troughs

AIPAC has funneled some $80 million into this year's political races, including $2.3 million it just pumped in to help endangered pro-Israel diehards such as Senators Ted Cruz andJacky Rosen.

Senator Ted Cruz, center, at the dedication ceremony of the US Embassy in Jerusalem in 2018. “This fight is barbarism against civilization, good versus evil,” Cruz has said in contrasting Israel and Hamas, which he has urged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to “eradicate,” which is music to AIPAC’s ears and made the group his No. 1 political contributor. Photo via Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain.

With less than a week to go before the general election, I thought it would be a good time to check in on the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, more commonly known as AIPAC, and see how much money the group is spending and who it’s trying to get elected to congress as the clock winds down towards the balloting. The short answer, which I found by reviewing disclosure reports that cover the period between October 1 and 16, the last that will be made public before the election, is that AIPAC is spending lavishly during the final days of the 2024 campaign, and disproportionately directing its resources to a relatively small number of candidates.

Top beneficiaries of AIPAC’s late breaking largesse include a number of powerful members of congress who are unshakeable supporters of Israel who are locked in close reelection races, including Republican Senator Ted Cruz and Democratic Senator Jacky Rosen. AIPAC is also pumping money into the campaigns of similarly endangered though less well known lawmakers that the group views as critical allies and is keen to see them return to congress when it convenes next January.

For those that aren’t familiar with AIPAC, the group portrays itself on its website as a movement of pro-Israel Americans whose goals are to “strengthen bipartisan support for the US-Israel relationship” and “promote peace.” Back on Planet Earth, AIPAC would be more precisely described as Israel’s most powerful ally in Washington, joined at the hip with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party, a proponent of ever increasing military aid to the country, and utterly tireless in attempting to whitewash every ethnic cleansing campaign and war crimes the country’s army perpetrates with US weaponry. 

AIPAC was founded as the American Zionist Committee In 1954, six years after Israel was established, by Isaiah Kenen, a lobbyist for the Israeli government and member of its first UN delegation. One of the primary reasons Kenen set the organization up was – and I hope y’all are sitting down because you won’t possibly believe this –to help Israel overcome the negative fallout that ensued after an army unit led by future Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, acting on the orders of David Ben-Gurion, the country’s leader at the time, massacred 69 Palestinian civilians, the large majority women and children, in the village of Qibya the year before. Sharon ordered "maximal killing and damage to property” at Qibya so it would serve as “an example for everyone," he wrote in his diary.

Israel framed the slaughter – this first part will also sound quite familiar – as retaliation for a raid by members of a Palestinian militia who killed an Israeli woman and her two children, but – and this next part will be hard to fathom – the US public largely rejected the Ben Gurion government’s transparently flimsy justification for the slaughter, in large part because its alibi was refuted by excellent reporting from major media outlets. Time magazine ran a disturbing account – these next few words coming up will surely ring a bell once more – that described “deliberate, even casual mass murder by Israeli soldiers at Qibya” who were seen “slouching...smoking and joking,” and the New York Times carried  extensive excerpts “from a UN report that refuted Israeli lies about the incident,” in the words of a 2018 Washington Post story that looked back at the circumstances of AIPAC’s founding.

It wasn’t until the 1980s that AIPAC became known as a lobbying powerhouse, but its influence has steadily grown ever since. The group strongly advocated for the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, which was Netanyahu’s wettest dream at the time, though it then lied about having done so after the post-war epoch became such an epic disaster, as Responsible Statecraft has reported. 

Then-Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and President George Bush at the White House in 2004. AIPAC had been founded a half-century earlier to try to shore up Israel’s support after fallout ensued following the massacre of 69 civilians by a special forces unit Sharon commanded at the time. Photo via Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain.

Today, AIPAC is widely seen to be not only the leader of the larger pro-Israel lobby in the US, but one of the most influential – and feared – advocacy groups in the entire country. During the past two years, it has spent about $5.5 million on lobbying, according to figures compiled by Open Secrets, a nonpartisan group that tracks politics and money. 

AIPAC helped win approval for bills and resolutions that increased economic and military aid for Israel, condemned Hamas for the “use of sexual violence and rape as a weapon of war” during its attack in Israel on October 7 of last year – though that was ultimately revealed to be a propaganda hoax crafted by Netanyahu’s government that was  credulously reported by the New York Times and many other US outlets – and tightened sanctions on Iran. It also played a key role in promoting the idiotic Antisemitism Awareness Act of 2023, which congress approved by an overwhelming margin and paved the way for crackdowns on free speech, especially at college campuses, by labeling criticism of Israel as antisemitic. 

AIPAC is politically oriented towards the right and gets most of its funding from conservative donors, but it gives far more to Democrats than Republicans. The reason is in general, GOP members of congress are virtually united in supporting Israel anyway, so AIPAC doesn’t have to spend as much to buy them. Democratic lawmakers are largely in favor of Israel as well, but on balance more likely to criticize its government for human rights abuses and raise objections to sending it military aid; hence, AIPAC dispenses a great deal of money in hopes of knocking incumbent Democrats it perceives as enemies of the country by recruiting and financing challengers to run against them in party primaries or, if that fails, throwing its support behind Republican candidates it believes have good prospects to beat them in the general election.

Between January 1, 2023, the start of the current election cycle, through September 30 of this year, AIPAC’s in-house PAC raised about $56 million according to Federal Election Commission (FEC) records. That money was mostly provided in relatively small amounts of not more than a few thousand dollars per donor, so it’s hard to be precise about the source, other than that roughly 90 percent came from individuals and 10 percent from other PACs. During the same period, it dished out $42.5 million in contributions, with almost two-thirds of that going to Democratic candidates, most of the rest dispensed to their Republican counterparts, and $3 million to political committees linked to one of the two parties. 

Meanwhile, the United Democracy Project, a Super PAC affiliated with AIPAC, has raised $82.5 million during the current election cycle. More than $26 million of that, or about 39 percent, came from the financial, insurance and real estate industries, making it the top economic sector to underwrite the Super PAC by a long shot. 

Most of the money provided by those industries came from a nauseating collection of hedge funds and investment firms. That group includes Elliott Management, whose founder, president, and co-CEO is GOP megadonor and vulture capitalist Paul Singer, a “longtime supporter of hawkish pro-Israel causes,” in the words of The Forward, and Saban Capital Group, which is owned by Israeli-American media magnate Haim Saban, a top tier Democratic Party contributor who publicly attacked the Biden administration earlier this year for briefly delaying weapons shipments to Israel. Elliott Management and Saban Capital each gave $2 million to the United Democracy Project.

AIPAC’s Super PAC budgeted about $40.5 million of its haul for “independent expenditures,” which doesn’t go directly to candidates but pays for ads, political consulting, and other work designed to support or oppose their candidacies. AIPAC’s political contributions during the current election cycle combined with the United Democracy Project’s outlay on independent expenditures comes to a combined $83 million. 

That figure would rank the organization as the fifth largest political donor in the country, and a number of other entities high on the list of leading megadonors are huge backers of Israel as well. That includes No. 1 Adelson Clinic for Drug Abuse Treatment and Research, which is controlled by casino magnate Miriam Adelson, the wife of the late, unfathomably repellent Sheldon Adelson, RIP, which has distributed nearly $130 million, all of it to Republican candidates and committees. 

Hedge fund manager, vulture capitalist, and global Dark Lord Paul Singer is a “longtime supporter of hawkish pro-Israel causes” and a leading financial underwriter of AIPAC’s Super PAC. Photo via Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain.

Miriam Adelson is a fanatical Zionist, as was her dearly departed ex, who was born in Tel Aviv. She is one of the top financial backers of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and reportedly cut a quid pro quo deal with the GOP nominee that exchanged her money for his ironclad pledge to provide maximum political support to Israel in the event he wins the White House. If that comes to pass, Adelson, who along with her late husband “were influential in Trump’s monumental direction to move the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to the country’s capital city of Jerusalem in 2017” will likely once again “be instrumental in shaping American policy on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” an October 17 story in the Times of Israel declared. 

The United Democracy Project didn’t spend any money between October 1 and 16, as most of its attention during the 2024 campaign was focused on Democratic primary races earlier this year, which it put at the top of its priorities after the Hamas attacks in Israel on October 7 of last year, as The Intercept reported last week. The Super PAC doled out a combined $23 million to target two progressive Democrats two races alone, 

The Super PAC allocated almost $10 million of that sum to its successful effort to defeat Congressman Jamaal Bowman, a member of the Squad, and another $4.7 million to promote his Democratic primary challenger, the Israeli government doormat George Latimer. It spent another $5.2 million to beat Congresswoman Cori Bush, another Squad affiliate, and $3.3 million to purchase the soul of her opponent, Wesley Bell.

AIPAC’s Super PAC does have a horse in the race in a few congressional elections that will be held in November, but it’s not spending any money to influence those contests any longer. In February of this year, it funneled $5 million to the Standing Strong PAC, which was about half of what that organization has spent so far to oppose GOP Senate candidate Steve Garvey in California, who’s running against which Democratic Congressman Adam Schiff. 

Garvey desperately sought to suck up AIPAC by traveling to Israel during the campaign to perform a sad dog-and-pony show to demonstrate fealty to Netanyahu, but it was of no avail. Schiff, who’s expected to win the race easily, previously chaired the Intelligence Committee and served on the Foreign Affairs Committee, and is one of Israel’s key congressional allies. Hence, as he’s a bird in the hand who would be even more useful in the Senate, AIPAC was happy to help him out by donating directly to his campaign and bolster that with money from the United Democracy Project that financed the smear campaign against Garvey, the bird in the bush, back at the start of the year.

AIPAC’s in-house PAC, on the other hand, has been diligently working to enhance its political influence further in the final days before the election approaches. Between October 1 and 16, it made some $2.3 million in total donations, with $100,000 going to the National Republican Congressional Committee and almost all the rest divided among dozens of candidates from both of the two major parties. 

During that period, AIPAC made sizable contributions to a few members of congress who are guaranteed to be reelected but  hold extremely powerful positions. In such cases, it never hurts to show an extra token of appreciation for their past dedication to Israel and kick it a bit of spare change with the expectation the recipients will provide invaluable assistance in the future, perhaps ramming a military aid package to Israel through congress even though it should be blocked under US law as a result of Netanyahu’s latest mass murder of Palestinian civilians or blocking humanitarian assistance from reaching them. The chief example here would be House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who AIPAC bestowed approximately another $65,000 on during the first half of this month, which came on top of close to $700,000 it had already provided earlier in the current cycle.

However, a good share of the top recipients of AIPAC’s money need the cash more urgently because they have tough reelection races, and have come through for Israel in the past. A case in point is Senator Rosen, a Democrat from Nevada, who’s been running neck-and-neck with her Republican opponent and is a sure vote in Israel’s favor in the clutch. She received an injection of $144,000 into her campaign account between October 1 and 16, bringing her total haul during the 2024 cycle to more than $1 million. 

First-term Democratic Congressman Don Davis in North Carolina, who’s defending his seat against a GOP challenger in a race that’s considered to be the only toss-up in the state, is a BOGO for AIPAC, first because he’s slavishly devoted to Israel and therefore doesn’t require much adult supervision. In January, he traveled to the country as part of a weeklong congressional delegation that met with Netanyahu, President Isaac Herzog, and leaders of the IDF, and toured the northern border, where he “learned firsthand about Iran’s destabilization efforts,” including support for Hezbollah and “backing extreme actors like Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad,” stated a press release issued by his office at the time, which promised the US always “stands with Israel as it takes decisive actions to ensure the security of its people.” Last November, Davis was one of 22 Democrats to join with House Republicans, thereby allowing for passage of a resolution that censured Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, the only Palestinian American in Congress, for expressing “antisemitic rhetoric” by saying the unforgivable words “from the river to the sea.”

Second, Davis is African-American and AIPAC proactively targets Black and Latino lawmakers with the same intensity the IDF targets civilians, as it can trot them out as political ammunition to counter the Squad. That’s why the group has lavishly financed Congressman Ritchie Torres, who represents the Bronx and is the first openly gay Afro-Latino member of congress, and explains why AIPAC pumped somewhere in the neighborhood of $200,000 into Davis’s campaign treasury during the first half of October. 

On the GOP side, incumbent Congressman Juan Ciscomani of Arizona is almost a political carbon copy of Davis for AIPAC. A Mexican-American lawmaker who’s facing a tough reelection fight against a former Democratic state legislator, Ciscomani joined a group of House Republicans on a delegation to Israel in April, where they met “participated in a briefing with former Israel Defense Forces military personnel, heard from families of current hostages held by Hamas, and visited sites of the October 7 attacks,” according to a press release put out by his press office after he returned from the trip that closed with the congressman saying, “For decades, Israel has been one of our most important partners and a beacon of democracy in the Middle East. Their mission to defeat Hamas is not just crucial for Israel, but for the entire world.” Presto chango, AIPAC Doled out $175,000 during the first half of the month to bolster Ciscomani’s chances of prevailing against his challenger next week.

There are a number of other elected leaders in tough spots at the moment who AIPAC has rushed in to lend a hand during their hour of need, the last who I’ll mention here before closing being Senator Cruz of Texas, who recent polls show is tied in his bid for reelection with Democratic Congressman Colin Allred. The latter is hardly a radical and would likely routinely back Israel if he were to win the election, but Cruz is a pillar in the Israel lobby, saying on many occasions that his support for the country is unconditional. “This fight is barbarism against civilization, good versus evil,” he said during a speech on the Senate floor last year. “America’s policy should be absolutely unequivocal: to ensure Israel has the military and diplomatic support to utterly eradicate Hamas, for as long as it takes. I want to repeat that last part: For. As. Long. As. It. Takes.” 

That’s exactly the type of dimwitted toadstool AIPAC likes best, and so the group, which is Cruz’s No. 1 supporter over the past five years making almost $260,000 in contributions to his campaigns, has been nervously watching the state of the race. Seeing that it’s still close to call, AIPAC came up with another $60,000 for Cruz during the first two weeks of October.

AIPAC is also providing last minute financing to six incumbent House members, four Republicans and two Democrats, who are in races that are rated as too close to call. They are:  

• Democratic Congressman Jared Golden of Maine ($74,000), who voted for $14.3 billion in fresh military aid to Israel soon after the IDF assault on Gaza began and has kept supporting additional arms shipments ever since. Golden was among the 22 Democrats who voted to censure Tlaib and was one of about half of the party’s congressional delegation to attend Netanyahu’s address to congress in July. “I appreciated Netanyahu’s recognition of the Trump administration’s work to pass the Abraham Accords and of the Biden administration’s strong support for Israel after the deadliest attack against Jews since the Holocaust,” he stated afterwards.

• Republic Congressman Don Bacon of Nebraska ($56,000), an egregious moron even by the standards of congress. In May of this year, he filed a censure of Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, which is nearly identical to the one that punished Tlaib, that accuses her of hating Jews because when speaking with protestors at the pro-Palestinian encampment at Columbia University the previous month she said, "We should not have to tolerate antisemitism or bigotry for all Jewish students, whether they are pro-genocide or anti-genocide,” which Bacon said could "inflame violence against the Jewish community." The lawmaker frequently puts on pom-poms to perform as a cheerleader for Natanyahu and genocide, issuing a statement in July that lauded the prime minister’s “outstanding speech” to congress that “laid out his commitment to destroy Hamas,” which uses “civilians as human shields with the intent of driving up the casualties to try and trick the world” and “also hate Americans and would happily put us in the crosshairs of their weapons."

  

  Congressman Don Bacon. Believe it or not, he’s even dumber than he looks. Photo via Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain.

• Republican Congressman Ken Calvert of California ($44,000), who’s extremely valuable to AIPAC as he’s a national security hawk and pro-Israel zealot In May, the House approved the Israel Security Assistance Support Act, which Calvert introduced and co-sponsored, and restricted “President Biden’s misguided efforts to withhold critical security resources appropriated in US law by compelling the delivery of defense weapons to Israel as they fight to protect themselves against radical terrorists.”

• Democratic Congresswoman Yadira Caraveo of Colorado ($36,000), a first-term House member who has regularly supported additional weapons shipments to the IDF. She flew on a junket to Israel in August of 2023 that was paid for by the American Israel Education Foundation, an organization affiliated with AIPAC that sponsors travel “to help educate political leaders and influentials about the importance of the US-Israel relationship.”

• Republican Congresswoman Michelle Steel of California ($21,500), a far-right loony tune who said at a Tea Party event in 2014 that she had forced her daughter to withdraw from college for a year to reverse the effects of being "brainwashed" by exposure to dangerous ideas, with the result that she had gone away to study as a perfectly normal young woman but come home in favor of same-sex marriage. Steel is nevertheless a perfectly Useful Idiot to AIPAC as she invariably votes in favor of all legislation that favors Israel and introduced a bill last year “to ensure not a single US taxpayer dollar will be granted to the Palestinian Authority again until it recognizes Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish State, rejects Hamas from its government, and brings these terrorists to justice.”

• Republican Congressman David Schweikert of Arizona ($16,000), who’s facing a strong challenge from Democrat Amish Shah, a former state lawmaker who, like the incumbent, is a fervent backer of Israel, which generated a bidding war between the two men to win AIPAC’s endorsement. Schweikert, who had the edge as the current officeholder and as an added bonus has a seat on the Foreign Affairs Committee, won out after making his case with a statement on his House website that waved a white flag indicating his complete surrender to the Israeli government and the IDF. “Israel is one of the United States’ strongest allies – and continued American support for Israel is paramount,” it says. “The US-Israeli partnership endures not only because of our shared values of democracy and human rights – the only country in the Middle East that shares those values – but our strong economic and defense ties as well.”

AIPAC hasn’t contributed to Trump or Kamala Harris’s presidential campaigns, probably because it wouldn’t be wise to annoy either of them when both are diehard supporters of Israel. However, the crew of lawmakers its financing who are noted in this story are among approximately 360 congressional candidates competing for 538 seats in the House and Senate that AIPAC has donated to in the 2024 election cycle. That makes it a certainty that when the dust clears after the votes are counted next week, the group will own a stake in a majority of the country’s lawmakers, and that means the Israeli government will too.