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<\/p>\nAfter Jamaal Bowman left his job as a New York school principal to run for Congress in 2020, he received an invitation.<\/p>\n
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, better known as AIPAC, wanted him to attend a meeting.<\/p>\n
Bowman was wary of the lobby group, whose stated mission is “keeping Congress pro-Israel”. He turned down the invite.<\/p>\n
“Even at that time, amongst progressives, we likened AIPAC to the NRA,” he said, referring to the National Rifle Association, another group known for its influential role in US politics.<\/p>\n
The refusal to meet made him an AIPAC target early, he said. He later cemented that status by becoming one of Congress’s chief critics of Israel.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Jamaal Bowman was targeted by AIPAC during his 2024 primary election in New York, which he lost to a pro-Israel Democrat. (Reuters: Joy Malone)<\/p>\n
So when he was up for re-election in the 2024 Democratic primary, AIPAC and its affiliates invested big money in an effort to unseat him.<\/p>\n
Its political spending group, the United Democracy Project (UDP), put a record-breaking $US14.5 million into ads against him.<\/p>\n
Notably, the ads did not focus on AIPAC’s core issue.<\/p>\n
“Zero per cent [of the ads] talked about Israel,” Bowman told the ABC.<\/p>\n
“[The ads were] like, ‘Oh, Jamaal Bowman is not a real Democrat because he opposed \u2026 this one part of one bill that Biden supported’, whereas their real focus and agenda is unequivocal support for Israel.”<\/p>\n
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Ads funded by the AIPAC-linked United Democracy Project generally do not mention Israel. (AdImpact)<\/p>\n
Bowman lost his seat to a pro-Israel Democrat.<\/p>\n
Senator Bernie Sanders, who campaigned for Bowman, said at the time: “Big money buys politicians who will do their bidding, and the results are clear.”<\/p>\n
AIPAC celebrated the win, labelling Bowman an “anti-Israel extremist”.<\/p>\n
Two years later, ahead of the midterm elections for the US Congress, AIPAC is deploying the strategy again.<\/p>\n
Avoiding the issue<\/p>\n
AIPAC boasts about a track record of success deciding election-winners.<\/p>\n
After the 2024 elections, the group produced a memo<\/a> that said 98 per cent of AIPAC-endorsed candidates had won their races.<\/p>\n It noted AIPAC members had contributed more than $US53 million to candidates.<\/p>\n But its effort against Bowman was the first time it had directed such big money towards attack ads.<\/p>\n The tactic now appears to be part of the AIPAC playbook.<\/p>\n “AIPAC never runs ads that mention Israel,” said Casey Kennedy, a co-founder of Track AIPAC, which analyses and publishes details about AIPAC and its affiliates’ spending.<\/p>\n “The issue is not popular for them. If they tried to run that messaging, it wouldn’t work. So they’re going to message about everything else under the sun.”<\/p>\n Public opinion has been turning against Israel in the US, particularly among Democrats.<\/p>\n In a Pew Research<\/a> poll in April, 60 per cent of Americans had an unfavourable view of Israel, up from 53 per cent a year earlier.<\/p>\n The figure increased to 80 per cent among Democrats and Democrat-leaning independents.<\/p>\n Neither AIPAC nor the UDP responded to the ABC’s interview requests or written questions about their advertising or other tactics.<\/p>\n But a UDP spokesman recently told Inside Political Money<\/a>: “We run ads on issues most voters care about.”<\/p>\n He said other political action groups used a similar strategy but were not subject to the same scrutiny because of a “media double standard”.<\/p>\n The Michigan test<\/p>\n The Democrats’ contest to choose a senate candidate in Michigan this week was seen as a test of AIPAC’s clout \u2014 and whether its support can be toxic.<\/p>\n The group and its affiliates spent more than $US30 million to back Haley Stevens, the moderate “establishment” candidate, against progressive Israel-critic Abdul El-Sayed.<\/p>\n Why Michigan was a crucial Democrat primary<\/a><\/p>\n Abdul El-Sayed’s victory in the Democrats’ Michigan primary race could shape the party’s messaging to voters and how it responds to Donald Trump ahead of November’s crucial midterms.<\/p>\n Again, the ads funded by AIPAC and its groups did not mention Israel. Some featured a 2018 clip of former president Barack Obama praising Stevens’ work for the car industry. Others highlighted El-Sayed’s previous criticisms of Obama.<\/p>\n AIPAC’s support for Stevens became one of El-Sayed’s key attack lines.<\/p>\n He described the spend on Stevens’s campaign as a “$30 million down payment on a vote to send $3 billion somewhere else”, referring to the US’s annual military financing package for Israel.<\/p>\n A local poll<\/a> highlighted the risk AIPAC’s support could backfire in the state, which has the US’s highest proportion of Arab Americans.<\/p>\n Democratic primary voters in Michigan were asked: Would you be more or less likely to vote for a candidate that was supported by AIPAC, or does the issue make no difference to you?<\/p>\n Some 40.6 per cent of voters said they would be less likely, compared to just 3 per cent who said they would be more likely, and 47.1 per cent who said no difference.<\/p>\n In the Democrats’ senate primary race in Michigan, AIPAC-linked advertising focused on Haley Stevens’s domestic policy record.<\/p>\n El-Sayed narrowly defeated Stevens in what was seen as a big loss for AIPAC.<\/p>\n But its spending still appears to be paying off elsewhere. AIPAC says 30 pro-Israel candidates won other primary elections this week.<\/p>\n Contentious tactics<\/p>\n Illinois proved another interesting case study on AIPAC’s strategies during the state’s primary elections earlier this year.<\/p>\n Forty-six Democrats competed for the party’s nomination in four key seats around Chicago.<\/p>\n At least some of those candidates had meetings with AIPAC. One of them, state senator Willie Preston, later said AIPAC was “looking for slaves”.<\/p>\n Public radio station WBEZ<\/a> surveyed the 46 candidates in late February.<\/p>\n By that point, AIPAC had chosen a candidate to back in each seat.<\/p>\n In the survey, almost all candidates agreed that there should be strict conditions on aid to Israel, and that Israel had committed genocide in Gaza. But the four AIPAC-backed candidates would not give “yes” or “no” answers, WBEZ reported.<\/p>\n AIPAC and its affiliates spent millions supporting those candidates. In the end, two of the four AIPAC-backed candidates won their races.<\/p>\n Trump’s ‘Mini-Mamdani’ crackdown<\/a><\/p>\n Democratic socialism is on the rise in the US, and it is sparking a sharp campaign from Republicans.<\/p>\n Other candidates said AIPAC-linked funding had been disguised and deceptively spent. Much of the money went through “shell” organisations, which had names like Elect Chicago Women and Affordable Chicago Now, and did not promote their ties to AIPAC.<\/p>\n “It [AIPAC] makes sure to wrap that money in a feel-good name and hope voters don’t notice,” candidate Kat Abughazaleh, one of AIPAC’s targets in the Chicago races, told her online followers<\/a>.<\/p>\n The tactic is legal but “cowardly”, Track AIPAC’s Casey Kennedy told the ABC.<\/p>\n “These groups are doing the most that they can to provide the least transparency,” he said.<\/p>\n “This is a symptom of our very flawed campaign finance system that we have here in the US.”<\/p>\n Unwanted support<\/p>\n Unusually, another AIPAC-linked group spent money in the Chicago campaign supporting a staunch critic of Israel.<\/p>\n A shell group called Chicago Progressive Partnership ran ads to boost progressive candidate Bushra Amiwala. She called it<\/a> a “cheap attempt to smear my name”.<\/p>\n Amiwala was not a frontrunner in her race. But Abughazaleh, a prominent local influencer who had used her platforms to criticise AIPAC and Israel, was.<\/p>\n So some candidates saw the move as a calculated attempt to split the anti-Israel vote to damage Abughazaleh’s chances.<\/p>\n Abughazaleh was narrowly beaten by Daniel Biss, the mayor of a Chicago suburb.<\/p>\n After Kat Abughazaleh lost her primary race by a few thousand votes, AIPAC said it was “very proud to help defeat her”. (Reuters: Jim Vondruska)<\/p>\n![\"Haley](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/aa0cea594b133d9df6f195a2af7ecbac.jpeg\")
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