PATRICK LAWRENCE: AIPAC’s Anxieties

The Israel lobbies’ grip on U.S. politics has slipped beyond restoration since Oct. 7, 2023 due to the Zionist army’s own savagery in Gaza.  

By Patrick Lawrence
Special to Consortium News

If Charlies Kirk’s well-documented defection from the Zionist cause confirmed one thing above all others, it is that the Israeli lobbies’ grip on American politics has slipped—measurably, and I would say beyond any kind of restoration—since the events of Oct. 7, 2023.

It would take more hasbara than the Israelis could ever produce to persuade me Kirk did not pay for his abandonment of the Christian–Zionist orthodoxy when he was assassinated before a crowd of conservative youth last Sept. 10.

Andrew Cockburn has an excellent piece on this question in the current edition of Harper’s, published under the headline “Turning Point.” Andrew’s subhead goes to the point of this turning point: “How the GOP consensus on Israel cracked.”

As he makes clear, Kirk’s desertion of the ideological temple wherein he had worshipped the whole of his life as a public figure was highly significant given his stature and influence. But it was symptom, not cause.

No, the Zionist army’s savagery in Gaza is the cause: This accounts for the now-evident fissures in the wall Zionists — Israeli, American, Israeli–American — have built to protect Israel from even the mildest expressions of doubt or dissent among conservative Americans.

A month after Kirk’s murder Cockburn stood outside an auditorium at Indiana University where he, Kirk, had been scheduled to speak and where Tucker Carlson took his place. “Christian values? Israel massacres innocents.” “Would Jesus ignore this? Will you?”: These were among the things inscribed on placards people held as they waited for the program to begin.

This betokens a breach not only among Christians who have long given Israel their unalloyed support. It also signals a generational divide that seems to widen with every poll taken since it was first detected.

The U.S.–Israel relationship, the censure of sympathy for Palestinians and support of their cause, the tiresome anti–Semitism-everywhere trope tone-deaf Zionists persist in trying to put over on the public: When evangelical Christians call all this into question you can safely call this a crisis.

AIPAC’s Full-On Election Assault

No one can claim surprise to discover the American–Israel Public Affairs Committee, the most powerful and pernicious of the Israel lobbies, is in what looks like an advanced case of freakout. And as this year’s elections draw near — primaries, special elections here and there, the midterms in November — AIPAC is reportedly gearing up for what appears to be a full-on assault on what remains of America’s post-democratic political process.

It seems the year to recognize some bitter realities. Israel’s incessant attempts to subvert the United Nations, notably but far from only via the Board of Peace the Trump regime is pushing, its abuses of international law and the courts founded to adjudicate and enforce it, its running program of assassinations, its indifference to the principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity: Isn’t it time to acknowledge that AIPAC’s presence in the United States is of a piece with these transgressions?

That what Israel is doing to America — with money rather than drones and missiles and bombers — is a variant of what we watch in horror as it does to other nations and to international public space? The wholesale destruction of civil societies and law is the common denominator.

Remember the political fates of Jamal Bowman and Cori Bush, candidates for congressional seats in New York and Missouri respectively, in the 2024 elections?

Both ran in Democratic Party primaries and both were critical of Israel a year into its terror campaign in Gaza. AIPAC spent more than $15 million to defeat Bowman and $8.5 million to keep Bush off the Democratic ticket, and it succeeded in both cases. A lot of this money arrived in the campaigns of their opponents via the Lobby’s United Democracy Project, and the name of this super PAC tells you a little of what Zionists mean when they boast of their chutzpah.

The operations against Bowman and Bush accounted for nearly 60 percent of the $38.4 million AIPAC donated to candidates favorable to Israel during the 2024 political season. These numbers were vastly more than AIPAC and associated lobbies had ever before spent on political campaigns (as against their routine bribes to all but a very few incumbents). At the time, various commentators took this cash explosion as a sign of an incipient desperation among the Zionists active in U.S. politics. Gaza had begun to cost them.

And we can take it now as a measure of what is to come during the campaign season that is about to begin. We are likely to be in for a circus of corruption and unlawful intrusion, possibly unprecedented, by a foreign agent that remains unregistered as one.

‘Genocide Test’ in 2026 U.S. Elections

In this connection, Haaretz, the “liberal” Israeli daily, ran a remarkable piece in its Jan. 21 editions under the headline, “AIPAC, the Genocide Test and U.S.–Israel.” The subhead once again tells the story: “2026 Midterm Primary Races to Watch from New Jersey to Texas.”

This is a long takeout by Ben Samuels, reporting from the paper’s Washington bureau, that amounts to a scorecard of just where AIPAC–backed candidates will be safe and where the lobbies will have to spend on those challenged by opponents ungiven to professed allegiance to the apartheid state.

“Stances on U.S.–Israel, Gaza, anti–Semitism and AIPAC funding,” the piece’s introductory reads, “are expected to shape elections across the U.S. this year.” And then, the second paragraph in:

“The approaching primaries are also likely to see record-breaking campaign spending by pro–Israel megadonors and super PACS—even as such efforts to sway elections are garnering unprecedented scrutiny from activists in both parties. It remains to be seen if it’s equally important to voters.”

Think about this just briefly, text and subtext. A couple of points.

One, Ben Samuels gives us a usefully accurate measure of just how insecure the Zionist state feels as Americans go to the polls during this, the third year of its genocide project in Gaza and the West Bank. Can you think of another nation that, looking out for itself, goes this granular on U.S. congressional elections?

Two, Samuels has reported and written several thousand words in which he puts it across that Israel and its bribing, corrupting, illegal-in-all-but-name agents in the United States are a perfectly normal presence in the American political process.

“[W]hat Israel is doing to America—with money rather than drones and missiles and bombers—is a variant of what…it does to other nations.”

Haaretz, parenthetically: I have to tell you I give up on Haaretz. I put “liberal” in quotation marks just above for a reason. The paper poses as the voice of liberal, reasonable Israelis, people who want to see justice done and law observed.

It is not: Haaretz — and this is not the first occasion the thought comes to me — is nothing more than Zionism with a human face, an apologist for a regime of terror. In this case it is all for the corruption of American politics — which is to say the incessant spread of Zionist subterfuge in what remains of America’s (and the rest of the West’s) democratic processes.

Let us continue reading Haaretz, if we are so inclined, but know exactly what we are reading.

Samuels offers Haaretz readers a survey of elections due in 15 states, where nearly 20–odd primaries are scheduled, some for special elections for seats incumbents have vacated or announced plans to do so. The first of these is hard upon us, set for Feb. 5, and happens to be among the most viciously contested.

Tom Malinowski is running for the Democratic nomination to replace Mikie Sherrill as she assumes the governorship of New Jersey. Malinowski is a longtime supporter of Israel. But while in the House Malinowski has spoken in favor of the human rights of Palestinians and has questioned Washington’s “unconditional” support for the apartheid state.

Bam. “Tom Malinowski is talking about conditioning aid to Israel,” Patrick Dorton, who speaks for United Democracy Project, the AIPAC super PAC, complained to The New York Times a week ago. “That’s not a pro–Israel position.”

Malinowski has accordingly been the object of a battery of very nasty attack ads — these costing hundreds of thousands of dollars so far, according to the Haaretz report, although I wonder whether Samuels is not understating AIPAC’s outlay.

And we find AIPAC up to its typically insidious strategy: The ads do not target Malinowski for his views on Israel but his support for the Trumpster’s unpopular (to say the least) immigration policies. This is a blind to disguise the AIPAC–United Democracy presence behind the smear.

Haaretz on this:

“Though AIPAC has not endorsed any of Malinowski’s challengers, the anti–Malinowski ads can be considered a mission statement ahead of the 2026 midterm season, where Democrats not sufficiently supportive of Israel will be attacked wherever any perceived vulnerabilities lie, even if the attacks are framed from the left.”

What an absolute mess that the Zionists think nothing of making these United States in their supremacist cause. The extent to which the lobbies deploy this deceitful strategy this year will be the extent voters may not know who in hell they are voting for — which, arguably, appears to be AIPAC’s intention.

At the other end of the campaign schedule, in a primary set for Sept. 1, we find Seth Moulton, who is challenging the long-incumbent Ed Markey for the latter’s Massachusetts Senate seat. Moulton was for a long time your average taker of AIPAC funds while occupying a Democratic seat in the House.

But when he announced his run for Markey’s seat, last Oct. 15, he seems to have had a finger up in the wind: He swore off any future donations from the Israel Lobby and vowed to return the dough he had already taken.

AIPAC was on Moulton’s case almost immediately, charging him with “abandoning his friends to grab a headline” and urging bought-off Democrats in the House to stand against him.

There is more to come in Moulton’s case, surely, and this will be interesting to watch. He joins a small but growing number of political candidates pledged to repudiate all ties with the Lobby.

O.K., some of these people had no prospect of ever getting any AIPAC money, but going public in this way counts for more than nothing.

Among my favs on this list is Graham Platner, who harvests oysters at Frenchman Bay along the Maine coast. He is explicitly anti–Zionist and is after the Senate seat long occupied by Susan Collins, who has taken roughly $650,000 from the Israel lobbies according to a well-done piece in The Palestine Chronicle.

As of late last year he is comfortably ahead of Janet Mills, the aging, pro–Israel governor and Platner’s opponent for the Collins seat.

Signs of the times: The pro– or anti–Zionist records of congressional incumbents and candidates can now be found at https://www.trackaipac.com/ and Rejectingaipac.org, although the algorithms seem to have been adjusted to make it difficult to find these sites.

The Palestine Chronicle also keeps an archive on the who-takes, who-doesn’t question.

From Malinowski next week to Moulton next September there will be some especially interesting battles between candidates who stand against the Israelis’ legions of agents and the Zionists’ terror in Gaza, even if in a carefully attenuated fashion.

Candidates in Illinois, including Kat Abughazleh, a Palestinian–American, are putting the U.S.–Israel relationship in front as they challenge incumbent creatures of AIPAC.

James Talarico, a 36–year-old Texan who is to stand March 3 for the Democratic nomination for a House seat, is a Christian of the sort Andrew Cockburn encountered in Indianapolis last autumn. He is openly critical of Israeli terror operations against Palestinians and, so far as available records show, does not accept donations from the Israel Lobby.

The race to watch most closely is Thomas Massie’s in Kentucky. The incumbent Republican has been very effectively outspoken not only in his opposition to Israel — or maybe what Israel has made of itself — but also, taking direct aim, on the influence in Washington of AIPAC and the other Zionist lobbies.

Massie is Beelzebub on wheels so far as the lobbies are concerned, and they have been on his case for years.

A super PAC associated with President Trump, along with Miriam Adelson and other super–Zionist mega-donors, has already raised millions of dollars to bring down Massie, who may — repeat may — seek the Senate seat now held by the retiring (thank goodness) Mitch McConnell.

All to be watched. While I am not an experienced forecaster of American politics, I do not anticipate an avalanche of anti–Zionist sentiment carrying the day either going into this political season or coming out of it.

A strong current in the right direction: Yes, as it becomes a liability to take Zionist money, this seems the more grounded expectation.

Good enough. And I don’t think there is any reversing this drift. AIPAC’s years of invisibility, all the years when Americans could not see all it gets up to, are over.

“Democracy becomes its own destroyer, after money has destroyed intellect,” Oswald Spengler wrote in The Decline of the West. Here and there he made the argument that as societies fail, money becomes more decisive than reason.

This is the Zionists’ offer to those who propose to represent Americans in high office, as it has been for many years. We have money, and with it we act against reason. Take your pick. Many wrong choices have been made in response to this proposition. Let us see if the Zionists’ money is still so green.

Patrick Lawrence, a correspondent abroad for many years, chiefly for the International Herald Tribune, is a columnist, essayist, lecturer and author, most recently of Journalists and Their Shadows, available from Clarity Press or via Amazon.  Other books include Time No Longer: Americans After the American Century. His Twitter account, @thefloutist, has been restored after years of being permanently censored. 

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