AIPAC’s Attack on the Liberal Zionists

Since late February, an AIPAC-linked super PAC called Elect Chicago Women has spent $1.4 million attacking Evanston, Illinois mayor Daniel Biss, a liberal Zionist running in the Democratic primary for a Chicago-area House seat.

It seemed a replay of the tactic AIPAC used in February in New Jersey’s 11th Congressional district, where the pro-Israel group spent over $2 million against the moderate pro-Israel Democrat Tom Malinowski, who had been open to conditioning aid to Israel. AIPAC’s strategy there backfired after their attacks on Malinowski led to the Democratic primary victory of Analilla Mejia, a more left-wing candidate who has called Israel’s actions in Gaza a genocide.

The attacks on Biss resurface the puzzle of the Malinowski race: Why is AIPAC using its resources to attack liberal Zionists, particularly in races where they face opponents farther to their left?

This week, with just days to go before the March 17th election, AIPAC’s strategy in Illinois appears to have shifted. As the more left-wing candidate, Kat Abughazaleh, moves into second place—only four points behind Biss, according to a new poll—AIPAC is now spending heavily against her.

In recent weeks, the AIPAC-linked super PAC Chicago Progressive Partnership has dropped around $1 million against Abughazaleh, who opposes all weapons sales to Israel. The last-minute turn against Abughazaleh seems to be an indication that AIPAC’s attacks on Biss could be pushing voters towards Abughazaleh, rather than their preferred candidate, State Senator Laura Fine, said Usamah Andrabi, the communications director for the progressive electoral group Justice Democrats, which has endorsed Abughazaleh. “That was a misstep that probably led to more voters going to Kat, and now in the 11th hour they’re spending against Kat,” he said.

The pricey last-minute attacks on Abughazaleh highlight the bind in which AIPAC has found itself, as it struggles to oppose both leftist critics of Israel, and liberal Democrats who were formerly willing to join the AIPAC camp. Political observers say AIPAC is focusing their money on liberal Democrats because they are going after the candidates thought to be the front-runners in their districts, and because the liberals increasingly support conditions on aid to Israel, a position that AIPAC sees as anathema.

“There is no safe liberal Zionist, centrist position that a candidate can take that will keep AIPAC off their back,” said Beth Miller, the political director of the anti-Zionist group JVP Action. “AIPAC is making it very clear that if you support Palestinian rights at all, and you are a possible contender, then you’re on their list.”

Biss and Malinowski told Jewish Currents that there is another reason why AIPAC is going after them: As candidates with close ties to the Jewish community and a track record of supporting Israel, they say AIPAC is worried they will be particularly effective at moving the rest of the Democratic Party toward opposing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and supporting some limits on aid to Israel.

Malinowski said an AIPAC official told him earlier this year that the organization was most concerned about the influence of centrist critics of Israel. “They’ve decided that moderate pro-Israel Democrats who are willing to criticize Netanyahu are a bigger problem for them than outright anti-Zionists,” Malinowski told Jewish Currents

Biss said he understood why AIPAC sees him as a threat. “AIPAC wants to be able to dismiss any criticism of the conduct of the current Israeli government as being from people who are against the idea of Israel existing as a Jewish democratic state in the first place, and who are knee jerk, reflexively opposed,” he said. “They can’t pull it off with someone like me, and that worries them.”

The targeting of liberal Zionists is not new for AIPAC. In 2022, AIPAC spent over $4 million in a Michigan primary to boost Rep. Haley Stevens over Rep. Andy Levin, a self-identified Zionist and former synagogue president who introduced legislation that would have restricted how US aid to Israel could be used. At the time, former AIPAC president David Victor Levin wrote in an email to pro-Israel donors that because Levin was a Zionist Jew, he was “more damaging” than fellow Michigan Democrat Rashida Tlaib, a Palestinian American anti-Zionist.

That Malinowski and Biss are AIPAC targets is also an indication of how liberal Democrats have shifted to the left on Israel/Palestine since the start of Israel’s invasion and bombing of Gaza. Both of the candidates previously voiced more conventional pro-Israel views. Malinowski, who was a member of Congress from 2019 to 2023 before losing his seat to a Republican, had been an AIPAC ally, joining an AIPAC trip to Israel in 2019 and signing an AIPAC-backed letter in 2021 opposing “additional conditions” on US aid to Israel. Just before Biss began his Congressional campaign last spring, he said he spoke with AIPAC representatives as part of an effort to outline his views—which includes support for US aid to Israel—and attempted to convince them to stay out of the race.

But this year, Malinowski said Netanyahu should not get a “blank check” from the US, and Biss came out in support of the Block the Bombs Act, which would halt the sale of certain US weapons to Israel. “The center of gravity has shifted away from the black-and-white world of AIPAC and the ‘Israel right or wrong’ policy they promote,” said Jeremy Ben-Ami, the president of the liberal Zionist lobby group J Street, which supported Malinowski and is backing Biss’s campaign. J Street itself has also shifted its policy to support conditions on aid to Israel.

Neither AIPAC nor its affiliated super PAC, the United Democracy Project, responded to a request for comment from Jewish Currents. In comments to The New York Times, a spokesman for the United Democracy Project said that Malinowski had talked about conditioning aid to Israel, and that that is “not a pro-Israel position.”

Malinowski says AIPAC’s coercive strategy may work in some elections. “If you’re a House candidate in a race with no margin for error, the threat of millions of dollars being spent against you in the final days of your race—whether by AIPAC or crypto or AI companies—is something you have to take very seriously,” he said.

But the heavy spending against Democrats could also lead to an anti-AIPAC backlash within the party. “I don’t think you can sustain a relationship with the Democratic Party if it’s based on threats and coercion rather than persuasion,” said Malinowski. “Eventually people are going to tell you to go fuck yourselves.”