Five things we learned from our reporting on the US’s pro-Israel lobby
The Guardian followed key congressional races affected by Aipac and similar groups for the past few months
Fri 16 Aug 2024
Last modified on Fri 16 Aug 2024 10.36 EDT
The progressive US representative Ilhan Omar
of Minnesota easily overcame a primary challenge on Tuesday, delivering
a major victory for progressives after a primary season marked by mixed
success amid an onslaught of spending from pro-Israel lobby groups.
The
progressive “Squad” in the House were early to embrace calls for a
ceasefire in Gaza and criticize Israel’s offensive for its toll on
civilians, drawing the ire of groups like the American Israel Public
Affairs Committee (Aipac). Omar and Summer Lee of Pennsylvania were
still able to easily cruise to victory in their primaries, but
pro-Israel groups successfully picked off its two biggest Squad targets
of this primary season: Jamaal Bowman of New York and Cori Bush of Missouri.
The
Guardian followed key congressional races affected by Aipac and similar
groups for the past few months. With the primaries coming to a close,
here’s what we learned about the pro-Israel lobby’s efforts this year.
1
Aipac is spending more as public opinion on Israel shifts
The
$23m Aipac pumped into defeating just two members of Congress can be
seen as evidence of the depth of the pro-Israel lobby’s concern that
public opinion is shifting away
from decades of largely unquestioning support for Israel as the US’s
“greatest ally”, particularly among young Americans. These shifts in
public opinion threaten the claims of a bipartisan consensus on support
for Israel in Congress.
Aipac’s creation of
the United Democracy Project (UDP) political action committee in 2021 to
directly intervene in election campaigns for the first time was in part
a response to opinion polls showing that even before the present war in
Gaza, half of Democrats wanted the US to give more support to Palestinians.
The
group pledged to spend $100m this election year; it has so far spent
more than $90m. Bowman and Bush’s races were the two most expensive
House primaries in history, according to the firm AdImpact.
Bowman and Bush were elected to Congress on the back of the Black Lives Matter movement, which has focused on reframing the Palestinian cause as a civil rights issue
of resistance to Israeli domination. The shift in narrative alarms
Aipac, as has the impact of international court rulings against Israel’s
occupation of the Palestinian territories and a growing consensus
within international human rights organisations that Israel imposes a
form of apartheid on Palestinians.
The war in Gaza, where Israel has killed at least 40,000 Palestinians,
a majority of them civilians, has only added to the challenges now
facing the pro-Israel lobby, with a third of Democrats saying Biden has
not been “tough enough”with Israel.
2
Pro-Israel groups spent big to pick off vulnerable incumbents
Aipac’s
UDP spent $14.6m in its campaign to unseat Bowman. The group Democratic
Majority for Israel (DMFI) spent another $1m to help George Latimer,
the Westchester county executive, win the Democratic nomination.
In
Bush’s primary, UDP spent $8.6m to promote the campaign of Wesley Bell,
a St Louis prosecutor, and DMFI contributed close to $500,000 to the
effort.
Photograph: Christian Gooden/AP
The
financial commitment paid off, as both Bowman and Bush went on to lose
their primaries. But it’s worth noting that Bowman and Bush were already
viewed as more vulnerable than some of their other Squad colleagues at
the start of the primary season.
Bowman had
attracted negative headlines last year for pulling a fire alarm in the
Capitol during a crucial vote, an incident that prompted a misdemeanor
charge and a formal House censure. Bowman also had to apologize
in January for writing some now-deleted blogposts promoting conspiracy
theories about the September 11 attacks, and Latimer was helped by redistricting,
which brought more of the suburban voters inclined to support him to
the district. Meanwhile, the justice department is investigating Bush’s
spending on security services, after she married her security guard and
kept him on her campaign payroll.
A Wesley Bell supporter campaigns in St Louis county, Missouri, on 6 August 2024. Photograph: Sue Dorfman/Zuma Press Wire/Rex/Shutterstock
Groups
like UDP and DMFI chose to focus their attention on lawmakers who
already had some kind of baggage heading into their primaries.
3
Pro-Israel groups stayed out of races they deemed unwinnable
Many election watchers expected
Lee’s primary in Pennsylvania to be the first test of the pro-Israel
lobby’s strength against the Squad, but UDP and DMFI chose to stay out
of the race.
The decision came as somewhat of a
surprise, as UDP and DMFI collectively spent nearly $4.4m against Lee
when she first ran for Congress in 2022. But the groups opted out of the
race this year after Lee spent her first term in Congress building
goodwill with her constituents and delivering more than $1.2bn in
funding for her district.
Summer Lee in Swissvale, Pennsylvania, on 23 April. Photograph: Quinn Glabicki/Reuters
The
Super Pac Moderate Pac, backed by the Republican mega-donor Jeffrey
Yass, did get involved in Lee’s race, but it was not enough to prevent
her victory. Lee ultimately defeated her opponent, local council member
Bhavini Patel, by 21 points.
A similar pattern
played out with Omar. She beat Don Samuels, a former Minneapolis city
council member, by 13 points on Tuesday after pro-Israel groups chose to
stay out of the race. The progressive representative Rashida Tlaib, the
only Palestinian American member of the House and one of the most vocal
ceasefire supporters, did not even draw a primary challenger.
In races where they did not think they could win, pro-Israel groups simply opted out altogether.
4
The pro-Israel lobby’s messaging didn’t focus on the war in Gaza
Although
pro-Israel groups targeted pro-ceasefire members, their attack ads
generally did not focus on the war in Gaza. That choice was strategic,
as polls show that an overwhelming majority of Democrats support calls for a ceasefire.
Instead, ads from UDP tried to paint members like Bowman and Bush as uncooperative Democrats sowing discord within the party and more focused on their national profiles than their districts. One UDP attack ad
against Bowman specifically called out his votes against the bipartisan
infrastructure bill and the debt ceiling agreement, mirroring the
group’s later attacks against Bush.
Jamaal Bowman concedes during his primary election watch party in Yonkers, New York, on 25 June. Photograph: David Dee Delgado/Reuters
“Jamaal
Bowman has his own agenda and refuses to compromise, even with
President Biden,” the ad’s narrator says. “Jamaal Bowman has his own
agenda, and it’s hurting New York.”
That strategy, powered by millions of dollars in ad spending, paid off.
Omar
knew to expect a significant primary challenge this year because she
won her 2022 primary against Samuels by just 2 points. This time around,
Omar was prepared. She raised roughly five times as much money as
Samuels did, and she deployed ads early as a sort of prebuttal against
potential attacks on her voting record.
Lee
similarly secured the narrowest possible victory in her 2022 primary,
winning by less than 1 point. Two years later, her margin of victory in
the primary had grown by 20 points.
Ilhan
Omar speaks to supporters after announcing her victory in the Minnesota
Democratic primary election in Minneapolis on 13 August. Photograph: Ben Brewer/Reuters
Bowman
and Bush were less tested, however. In 2022, Bowman won his primary by
29 points, although he tellingly secured only 54% of the total vote.
Bush easily won her primary in 2022, beating her opponent by 43 points
and securing 70% of the total vote.
This year,
it seems that progressives who experienced tougher primary fights in
2022 were better equipped to defend themselves when needed.
But
Aipac is not only taking aim at Israel’s most strident critics. The
millions of dollars poured into defeating Bush and Bowman are a warning
shot to other members of Congress and contenders that vocal criticism of
Israel or support for Palestinians may come at a political price.