Pro-Israel groups have instigated confrontation, and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict has become the battlefield of the US election丨Think tank perspective

On April 7, 2024, according to Xinhua News Agency and other media reports, due to the late date of the Democratic National Convention, the name of Democratic President Joe Biden may not be printed on the ballot in the Ohio presidential election.

Ohio is an old "swing state" but has shown a Republican leaning trend in recent years.

Previously, according to the Associated Press, on March 23, local time, Biden and Trump both won the Louisiana primary, defeated their main opponents in the party, and locked in the presidential nomination.

For the Democratic Party, the House primary, which began in January this year, has been far less smooth than the presidential primary. In the United States, pro-Israel groups are represented by the Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), and on the issue of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, members of the "Squad" who hold a minority position are constantly blocked by AIPAC and its funders when seeking re-election, which directly affects the layout of the Democratic Party in the current House of Representatives.

On June 5, 2023 local time, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken delivered a speech at the annual policy meeting of the U.S.-Israel Public Affairs Committee. (Visual China/Photo)

Group lobbying

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is the most powerful pro-Israel lobby in Washington, with its strong fundraising capabilities and extensive network, to win unconditional bipartisan support for Israel, and to bind Israel's national security to U.S. national interests. The group positions itself as a bipartisan group that supports both pro-Israel Democrats and Republicans.

During the 2022 midterm elections, AIPAC provided more than $17 million in campaign funding support to 365 pro-Israel candidates, making AIPAC one of the largest spending groups in the election season, according to AIPAC's official website. In the end, 98 percent of the candidates won the midterm elections, including House Speaker Mike Johnson, Republican, and Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic leader of the House, covering all members of the bipartisan leadership group in the House. Widely distributed pro-Israel forces in the U.S. Congress on both parties.

The huge spending and lobbying efforts of pro-Israel groups such as AIPAC have paid off handsomely.

In July 2023, Pramila Jayapal, president of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, referred to Israel as a "racist state," according to NBC News In response, Congress passed a pro-Israel resolution, which won a bipartisan victory in the Senate and House of Representatives by a margin of 97-0 and 412-9, respectively, emphasizing that Israel is not a country that supports racism or apartheid, opposes all forms of anti-Semitism and xenophobia, and emphasizes that the United States has always been a staunch partner of Israel.

After the outbreak of a new round of Palestinian-Israeli conflict on October 7, 2023, the voting results on the official website of the US Congress showed that the Senate and House of Representatives passed resolutions supporting Israel's self-defense and condemning the war launched by Hamas and other terrorists, respectively, and stood on Israel's side as always.

Why does AIPAC have such a huge political influence?

In 2006, American political scientists John Mearsheimer and Stephen Water published an article entitled "The Israel Lobby Group", which was later expanded into a famous monograph on international relations, "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy", which caused great repercussions.

In the book, the two scholars argue that the large and unconditional total support for Israel cannot be explained by strategic interests or moral justifications alone, and that it is precisely the Israel lobby that plays a key role in shaping American foreign policy. The political system in the United States provides space for interest groups to operate, while pro-Israel groups are well-organized, professionally divided, well networked, and strongly motivated and resourced to influence public opinion and public policy by donating to preferred candidates, lobbying elected legislators, and cultivating like-minded journalists.

In recent years, AIPAC's political influence has increased rather than decreased. According to AIPAC's official website, this is mainly due to the fact that it established a political action committee (PAC) in December 2021, which has greatly improved the organization's fundraising capacity and funding scope.

In less than a year since its formation, the PAC has become the committee that allocates the most money to candidates, whereas in the past, the activities of the Israel lobby were mainly focused on lobbying elected MPs, but the PAC allowed AIPAC to raise money indefinitely and directly fund pro-Israel candidates and their campaigns in elections to influence the outcome of the election.

Counter-current

However, starting in 2018, a minority on Israel affairs emerged in Congress, calling themselves "Squads" and taking opposing positions with AIPAC. This is an informal group and there is no clear list of members.

According to the American magazine "New Republic", the "squad" has gradually grown from 4 members in 2018 to 8-10 members currently, mainly including Rashida Tlaib, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, and Cori Bush), Jamaal Bowman, Summer Lee, Greg Casar, most of these lawmakers are people of color or women, and all Democrats in the Congressional Progressive caucus.

In the eyes of pro-Israel groups, the "squad" is a countercurrent. In the July and October 2023 resolutions in support of Israel, six out of less than 10 negative votes came from "squad" members.

In October 2023, Bush introduced a resolution calling for a de-escalation of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and an immediate ceasefire. As of March 2024, 18 lawmakers from the Democratic Party have co-sponsored the resolution, and all members of the "squad" are among them. AIPAC and the Israeli government insist on a ceasefire until Hamas is completely destroyed and deprived of its rule over Gaza, which is in direct conflict with the ceasefire led by the members of the "squad".

Although the "squad" is in the minority compared to the 213 House Democrats, their views have exerted greater influence and have become a thorn in the side of pro-Israel groups such as Democratic conservatives, Republicans and AIPAC.

According to CNN, Democratic Congressman Debbie Wasserman Schultz called her fellow voters "soulless" and Josh Gottheimer used the word "despicable," with many Democratic lawmakers who opposed the "squad" receiving large sums of campaign money from AIPAC.

The members of the "squad" are at risk of having their political status and reputation damaged because of their words and actions in Israeli affairs. For example, in February 2023, Omar was removed from the Foreign Affairs Committee by a majority vote from the Republican Party, and Tlaib, the only Palestinian woman in Congress, was condemned for her remarks about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

This is a severe punishment second only to expulsion from the National Assembly. In the first condemnation resolution, all Democrats voted against it, making the condemnation resolution fail to pass. However, in the second condemnation resolution in November 2023, 22 fellow Democrats defected, and finally voted 234 to 188, making Tlaib the 26th member of the U.S. Congress to be condemned, symbolizing the House of Representatives' collective statement of disapproval of his words and actions.

The second condemnation resolution noted that Tlaib's inappropriate words and actions included calling the Hamas raid a "legitimate resistance to the apartheid state" and his social media video containing the slogan "From the river to the sea", which was widely understood by the public to destroy the State of Israel and replace it with Palestine from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean.

"Battle of Kryptonite"

Pro-Israel groups such as AIPAC pose a serious challenge to the re-election of "squad" members in this year's Democratic primary.

According to Slate magazine, AIPAC plans to spend about $100 million in the Democratic primary, which is nearly three times the amount spent in the 2022 midterm elections.

In 2024, the United Democracy Project has raised $47 million, and to date, almost all of its independent spending of $5 million has been directed against the Democratic Party, including advertising campaigns against "squad" members and funding its challenger campaigns, according to the website Open Secrets, a nonprofit focused on increasing transparency in political funding, making AIPAC's bipartisan nature questioned by the Democratic left.

What is even more suspicious is that, according to the New York Times, at the end of 2023, about $1.5 million in donations to the United Democracy Project came from Republican supporters, which cast a cloud of bipartisan politics over the differences of opinion between AIPAC and the "squad" in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

AIPAC has spent massive amounts of money propping up challengers for "squad" members, and has poured advertising campaigns against Tlaib's campaign and called on Lee, Bowman, and Bush to change their stance on Israel. In contrast, the members of the "squad" rely mainly on grassroots donations and small fundraising.

However, their unique stance has been met by rising demands for a ceasefire in the polls, making it a record fundraiser. As of March, Ocasio-Cortez and Tlaib had raised $4.89 million and $4.58 million, respectively, to rank high among House candidates, according to the Federal Election Commission.

And according to CBS News, AIPAC is willing to contribute $20 million to fund candidates to challenge for Tlaib's position. The rest of the "squad" also had impressive results: Omar raised $3.21 million, ahead of his challenger Don Samuels, Bowman raised $1.39 million, slightly less than his challenger George Latimer, Lee raised $1.4 million, facing a challenge from Bhavini Patel, and Bush raised $920,000, ahead of his challenger Wesley Latimer. Wesley Bell: Casal raised $760,000 and Pressley raised $580,000, and no fellow funded Democrats have yet to express interest in their seats.

Although the Democratic leadership has received significant funding from AIPAC, the Democratic leadership in the House of Representatives has traditionally sided with incumbent members when outside groups challenge incumbent Democratic lawmakers.

In August 2023, when AIPAC threatened to fund candidates to challenge Omar for his position, her re-election received the collective support of six current and former Democratic leaders in the House of Representatives, according to a report by Politico, an American political news outlet. In November, House Democratic Leader Jeffries said at a news conference that "outside groups will do what outside groups should do, but House Democrats will support each other." ”

In January 2024, when Lee sought re-election, the three-member Democratic leadership in the House collectively expressed support for his re-election.

At the same time, the social forces of the progressives began to fight back. In March, the Reject AIPAC coalition, formed by 25 progressive groups, called on candidates and institutions to reject donations from AIPAC and its political action committees, and planned to invest millions of dollars in a campaign to support the "squad" members. Some of the more influential groups include the Justice Democrats, the Working Families Party, and the Democratic Socialists of America.

A battlefield of bipartisan contention

Despite Israel's overwhelming bipartisan support in Congress, the huge appropriations for Israel have been delayed due to bipartisan disagreements.

According to the official website of the U.S. Congress, in November 2023, the House of Representatives voted 226 to 196 to pass a supplementary appropriations bill of more than $14 billion to Israel, but Biden and other Democrats prefer to include funding for Israel in the overall foreign aid bill, so the bill failed to pass and be implemented in the Senate.

In February 2024, the Senate, where the Democrats hold a slim majority, voted 70-29 to pass the $93.5 billion Foreign Aid Act, which includes appropriations for Israel and nearly $10 billion in humanitarian aid to civilians in the Gaza conflict zone, with the remaining huge funds going to Ukraine and strengthening defenses in areas such as the Indo-Pacific and the U.S.-Mexico border.

However, Republicans such as Trump strongly oppose this huge spending, especially questioning the need to continue supporting Ukraine. House Speaker Johnson is also delaying the House of Representatives' discussion of the bill. As a result, huge amounts of aid to Israel have been delayed.

The-for-tat confrontation between AIPAC and the Democratic "squad" has put the moderates of the Democratic Party in an embarrassing position, and the Republican Party has found an opportunity to take advantage of it.

According to Reuters, after the Florida primary on March 20, Trump spoke: "Any Jew who votes for the Democratic Party hates their religion, hates everything about Israel, and they should be ashamed of themselves." ”

This may have been the beginning of Republicans exploiting the divisions within the Democratic Party over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by pitting the Democrats against Israel and the Jews in order to put the deep-pocketed and powerful group in the service of their own victory. If faced with an important juncture of competition between the two parties, will the members of the "squad" still be able to hold on to their minority views? How will Biden and other Democratic leaders deal with the increasingly fierce differences of opinion within the party? It is conceivable that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict will become a battlefield of fierce confrontation between the two parties in this year's general election.

He Xiaoxin, a special researcher at the Southern Defense Think Tank

Editor-in-charge: Yao Yijiang