'Truly horrifying': AIPAC criticized for endorsing GOP 'election deniers'
WASHINGTON – The decision by AIPAC, the most influential pro-Israeli lobby group in the U.S., to endorse 37 Republican members of Congress who refused to accept President Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election, is attracting criticism from pro-Israeli experts, writers and former U.S. officials, some of whom have worked with AIPAC for years.
Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin, known for her support of Israel, called the endorsements “truly horrifying.” She wrote on Twitter that the move is bad for Israel: “First you must be a defender of democracy, the only [government] that could conceivably support Israel. After all democracy is at the root of the Israel-U.S. relationship. This is a GROSS misjudgment.”
Martin Raffel, a former senior official at the Jewish Council for Public Affairs who worked closely with AIPAC, noted that while AIPAC is an "important pro-Israel group, protection of our democracy is foundational. GOP candidates who rejected 2020 election results don't deserve support."
Daniel Kurtzer, who served as U.S. ambassador to Israel under President George W. Bush, said it is “very disappointing that AIPAC has turned a blind eye to the damage that these people have done to our democracy. Their support of Israel cannot ever trump that damage.” Kurtzer said the pro-Israel group, which he had worked with in the past, “should reconsider and do the right thing for America.”
Council on Foreign Relations President Richard Haass slammed the endorsements, calling it “morally bankrupt [and] shortsighted to back [politicians] who undermine democracy."
Haass, who had served in various Republican administrations prior to taking on a leadership role with the non-partisan think tank, added that what ties Israel and the U.S. together is “a commitment to democracy. An undemocratic America could easily distance itself from the Jewish state.”
Norman Ornstein, a renowned political scientist and an Emeritus scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, called it a "staggering kind of tunnel vision, including support for many who may be ardent Christian supporters of Israel, but will not hesitate to be fine with vicious antisemitism to go with racism."
AIPAC surprised the U.S. political world last year by forming a political action committee and officially entering the campaign space for the first time. Jewish community leaders and former AIPAC officials warned at the time that such a move could endanger the group’s declared political neutrality and the bipartisanship that it has spent decades cultivating.
“Unlike other groups which have ideological and partisan agendas, we are a single-issue organization that is focused on our mission of building bipartisan support in Congress to strengthen the U.S.-Israel relationship,” AIPAC spokesman Marshall Wittmann said after the first slate of endorsements were announced.
Upon the announcement of the PACs at the end of 2021, Wittman said “the creation of a PAC and a super PAC is an opportunity to significantly deepen and strengthen the involvement of the pro-Israel community in politics. The PACs will work in a bipartisan way."