America’s pro-Israel lobby is facing a backlash

NEARLY TWO decades ago, John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt published “The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy”. They argued that a loose coalition of pro-Israel advocacy groups exerted significant influence over American policy debates, at times steering decision-makers in directions—such as support for the Iraq war—that proved bad for America. The backlash was immediate: critics dismissed the work as shoddy, naive and even antisemitic. Today, however, as America fights alongside Israel against Iran, views of the US-Israel relationship are shifting—and the book has resurfaced as a bestseller.

The organisation drawing the most attention now, as it did then, is the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), America’s largest pro-Israel advocacy group. For around 70 years it has worked to strengthen ties between the two countries. Like other domestic lobby groups, it does not receive money from foreign governments, including Israel’s. Instead it relies on donations from Americans, many of them Jewish. It is highly effective, regularly attracting senior Democrats and Republicans to its conferences. But as American attitudes shift, so too does its strategy—in ways that risk harming its cause.

America’s support for Israel was long a matter of bipartisan agreement. But as Israel’s government moved rightward under Binyamin Netanyahu, Democrats grew more critical—a trend accelerated by the war in Gaza. More recently, Republicans, too, have begun to rethink ties, with some seeing them as out of step with their “America First” principles. The share of Americans who view Israel favourably has fallen in recent years, hitting a near-40-year low in February, according to Gallup.

The Iran war isn’t helping. Earlier this month Joe Kent resigned as head of the National Counterterrorism Centre, claiming that Donald Trump had been duped into starting the war by “Israel and its powerful American lobby”. The public shares at least some of his unease. The latest Economist/YouGov poll found that most Americans think Israel will benefit from the war, while America will suffer. One in three said the pro-Israel lobby wields too much influence over the government.

AIPAC, meanwhile, has changed its approach. Alarmed by the election of several harsh critics of Israel in 2018, it moved aggressively into electoral politics—seeking to shape not just how lawmakers vote, but who gets elected. In 2022 it launched the United Democracy Project, a super PAC allowed to raise unlimited funds. After spending just $150,000 on races in the previous decade, it deployed $100m in the 2022 and 2024 election cycles (see chart).

So far this year AIPAC has poured more than $30m into efforts to take down “detractors” in Democratic primaries, focusing on House races in New Jersey, North Carolina and Illinois. But because support for Israel is so contested, it has set up proxy groups with anodyne names such as “Elect Chicago Women”. Their ads do not mention Israel. In New Jersey, for example, such groups went after Tom Malinowski for voting “with Trump and the Republicans to fund ICE”.

The new tactic has had mixed results. In Illinois just two of AIPAC’s four favoured candidates won. A candidate it backed in North Carolina, Valerie Foushee, disavowed it on the campaign trail. And although Mr Malinowski lost his race in New Jersey, a pro-Palestinian activist won.

Mr Malinowski was seen by many as relatively moderate on Israel. “They are being absolutists and it’s backfiring,” says Matt Bennett of Third Way, a think-tank. Top Democrats are swearing off AIPAC money. None of this appears to faze the group. In a social-media post celebrating its victories in Illinois, it declared that “being pro-Israel is good policy and good politics”. If that were so, says Lara Friedman of the Foundation for Middle East Peace, another think-tank, it would not shy away from making that case to voters.

AIPAC says that “like many groups” it will “continue to use different tools to engage in races this cycle”. But its use of front groups places it alongside industries such as oil, tobacco and crypto, which have deployed similar tactics. The added risk for AIPAC is that this approach may reinforce antisemitic tropes about covert influence over policymaking—at a time when such views are already gaining ground. ■