Uncategorized
These pro-Palestinian PACs are trying to beat AIPAC at its own game
(JTA) — Some critics of AIPAC are calling for it to be excised from electoral politics. Others are working to beat the pro-Israel lobby at its own game.
At least three groups have entered the scene this year as hopeful counterweights to pro-Israel lobbying groups, with an eye on progressive candidates. And they’ve borrowed some of AIPAC’s playbook to do so.
The Peace, Accountability and Leadership PAC, or PAL PAC, was founded in February by Margaret DeReus, executive director of the Institute for Middle East Understanding. It has endorsed nine congressional candidates so far this year, and its website funnels visitors to donate to their campaigns.
A second group, American Priorities, is led by Hannah Fertig, a strategist who worked on Bernie Sanders’ 2020 presidential campaign and is Jewish. Founded in January, the super PAC plans to spend “at least $10 million” on the midterms, according to Fertig, on candidates “who are very strong on our issues, both foreign policy and domestic policy.” In picking which challengers to back, Fertig said they look for “strong, credible, progressive” candidates — and ones whose incumbent opponents have taken donations from AIPAC.
The third group makes its antipathy clear in name: Citizens Against AIPAC Corruption PAC was founded by the duo behind social media watchdog Track AIPAC, which posts candidates’ AIPAC donation numbers in order “to end AIPAC and the Israel lobby’s stranglehold on American Democracy,” according to its website. CAAC was founded in 2024, though it only spent about $14,000 that cycle, all against the Jewish Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz.
This year, CAAC is “actively fundraising and willing to spend as much as we can raise seeking strategic victories,” a spokesperson wrote to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. Its candidates must meet a number of policy commitments that include recognizing “the genocide in Palestine,” supporting “recognition of the Palestinian state by the United Nations” and opposing policies that it says conflate “criticism of the government of Israel with antisemitism broadly.” The group has spent in two races this year, and with $273,000 in cash on hand as of the end of February, says it intends “to do more in upcoming races.”
Together, the PACs are trying to maximize the moment and elect pro-Palestinian candidates as Americans’ sympathy toward Israel wanes.
“We have a massive opportunity to be on the offensive this cycle, and increase the number of members of Congress who will challenge the status quo on Palestine,” Amira Hassan, PAL PAC’s political director, said in a recent radio interview. PAL PAC and American Priorities did not respond to requests for comment.
Patrick Dorton, a spokesperson for United Democracy Project, AIPAC’s super PAC, said in an interview that it’s “not good for American democracy” that these groups are popping up and “trying to silence pro-Israel voices in the Democratic party” — a critique that mirrors what pro-Palestinian activists say about AIPAC.
“This is the fringe left using dark money to advance an anti-Israel agenda,” he said.
Results of the groups’ spending so far have been mixed.
Two of the progressive groups’ handpicked candidates won primaries in New Jersey and Texas earlier this year, and another challenger in North Carolina narrowly lost after a wider defeat in 2022.
Last week, one of three PAL PAC endorsees in Illinois prevailed — as an unopposed incumbent. The group’s other endorsees fell short: Kat Abughazaleh, 26, finished second in the 9th Congressional District, although she drew more votes than the AIPAC-backed candidate, and community organizer Junaid Ahmed, who lost to AIPAC’s preferred candidate, Melissa Bean, in the eighth district.
The post-election quarterbacking had some critics of Israel wondering whether the new PACs could have done more.
Ryan Grim, a reporter for Drop Site News, which has an anti-Israel bent, called it a “huge miss” by American Priorities to resist “pressure to support” Ahmed. Grim suggested that it could have channeled more of AIPAC’s willingness to spend. The group had about $1.4 million in cash on hand as of Feb. 11, $1 million of which was spent in a North Carolina race.
“Results show they could’ve made a decisive difference,” he wrote about the race, which Ahmed lost by five points. “AIPAC almost never holds back, and didn’t here, and so notched the [win].”
Meanwhile, among the progressive groups’ candidates who did win, it’s not clear that the pro-Palestinian backing did anything to move the needle.
Analilia Mejia won a New Jersey special election and benefited from $35,000 in TV ad buys from CAAC PAC. But far more was spent in the campaign by the AIPAC’-affiliated United Democracy Project, which spent $2 million against the moderate Tom Malinowski because of his openness to conditioning military aid to Israel. That spending is widely seen to have inadvertently boosted Mejia, a former Bernie Sanders staffer.
CAAC PAC’s spending was modest compared to UDP’s in that race, but other groups are entering the midterms with deeper pockets.
American Priorities has pledged to spend at least $10 million boosting its preferred candidates this year.
“We want our foreign policy views to reflect where the Democratic base has moved, particularly on Gaza, and on unconditional U.S. military to Israel,” Fertig told Semafor.
A new NBC poll found that 57% of Democrats have a negative view of Israel, and 13% have a positive view of the country. In 2023, those numbers were just about dead even, with 35% of Democrats saying negative and 34% viewing Israel positively.
“We’re seeing this as a generational inflection point, and we launched because there’s a huge gap in the progressive spending ecosystem,” Fertig said. “We simply want to make sure that someone’s there to protect candidates who question these policies.”
As a super PAC, American Priorities’ role matches UDP’s. It cannot donate directly to campaigns or coordinate with them, but instead can make independent expenditures on things like TV ads and mailing fliers. Like UDP, its name indicates nothing about Israel or the Palestinians, and its ads focus on unrelated issues as opposed to the candidates’ views on Israel.
The first candidate to receive American Priorities’ support was Nida Allam, also a former Sanders staffer, who conceded after a tight race in North Carolina against incumbent Valerie Foushee. Allam’s campaign foregrounded her opponent’s past support from AIPAC and AI lobbies.
After getting about $1 million from American Priorities, Allam lost by less than 1% of the vote in a race that set records for outside spending in North Carolina. She had lost by 9 points to Foushee in 2022 and said “our movement sounded the alarm for future Democratic primaries throughout this cycle.” CAAC PAC also spent $23,500 in attack ads against Foushee.
On the same day as Allam’s race, the PAL PAC-endorsed Rev. Frederick Haynes III won the Democratic nomination in a Texas congressional primary. Haynes has praised Louis Farrakhan, the Nation of Islam leader who has a history of antisemitism, and criticized Israel for engaging in “apartheid” in a sermon the day after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack.
“We are sending someone to Congress who had the moral clarity to give this sermon on October 8th, 2023,” PAL PAC’s Hassan wrote after Haynes’ victory. American Priorities also spent $100,000 boosting Haynes, who won the primary handily.
Track AIPAC has spent multiple years posting online against the pro-Israel lobby. But the advent of the PACs signals an escalation of strategy.
“The idea of PACs backing ‘Squad’-type candidates, anti-Israel candidates, candidates that say cut off all aid to Israel and ‘stop the genocide,’ I don’t think we’ve seen that before,” said Eric Alterman, a historian and journalist who himself has been critical of AIPAC and the Israeli government. “And that’s an outgrowth of Gaza, where this position all of a sudden has become a mainstream position in the Democratic Party.”
The groups will have additional chances to prove themselves in the coming months. Eleven states are holding primaries in May, and some candidates in those races are making their views on AIPAC known.
In Pennsylvania, progressive state Rep. Chris Rabb — who is racking up endorsements, though not from any of the anti-AIPAC groups — said “F— AIPAC,” during a candidates’ forum.
PAL PAC is still making endorsements on a rolling basis and American Priorities has not disclosed which races it will spend in. PAL PAC’s latest endorsees are both running in June primaries: political adviser Saikat Chakrabarti in California, and State Assemblymember Claire Valdez in New York.
PAL PAC, which describes itself as “an allied organization” of the Institute for Middle East Understanding Policy Project, has also endorsed incumbent Reps. Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar and Summer Lee, who are all vocal critics of Israel and its U.S. support.
In New York City, it has endorsed Valdez as well as Darializa Avila Chevalier, who was a Columbia pro-Palestinian encampment organizer as well as an organizing lead for Zohran Mamdani during the mayoral election.
AIPAC is also likely to keep spending heavily in the coming months. Its super PAC had around $95 million in cash on hand at the end of January, and even the most expansive estimates of its spending since then leaves it with tens of millions of dollars to spend.
Alterman said he doesn’t expect the new pro-Palestinian PACs to receive “the kind of money that flows to AIPAC” — but he isn’t sure how much that matters.
“Whereas it could have some impact on a few local races, I don’t think money is the place where this position is going to make itself felt,” he said, referring to the groundswell of Palestinian support among Democrats. “I think it’s in volunteers and door-knocking and activists and social media.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post These pro-Palestinian PACs are trying to beat AIPAC at its own game appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
‘We Need to Wake Up’: Sylvan Adams Warns of Organized, Coordinated Antisemitism After Oct. 7
Canadian-Israeli philanthropist Sylvan Adams on The Algemeiner’s “J100” podcast. Photo: Screenshot
The protests began before the war did.
That, for Sylvan Adams, is the detail that should change how people understand everything that followed Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel.
Speaking on The Algemeiner‘s “J100” podcast, the Canadian-Israeli philanthropist pointed to the anti-Israel demonstrations that erupted across Western cities on Oct. 8 — less than 24 hours after Hamas’s atrocities — as evidence that the global reaction was not simply emotional or spontaneous.
“Israel hadn’t even entered Gaza yet,” Adams said. “We were still counting our dead.”
The speed and coordination of those protests, he argued, suggest something deeper: a preexisting infrastructure of activism, funding, and ideology that was activated the moment the attacks occurred.
“It’s like they flicked a switch,” he said.
In Adams’ view, the surge of antisemitism that followed the Oct. 7 attack is not an isolated phenomenon, but the visible expression of a long-building system — one tied to Islamist movements, state-backed funding, and ideological allies across the West.
“We need to wake up,” he said.
At the same time, Adams was clear that the loudest voices are not the majority. Most people, he argued, are neither antisemitic nor deeply anti-Israel — but they are not organized, not activated, and not nearly as visible.
“The majority is there,” he said. “But they’re not activists.”
That imbalance has allowed more extreme narratives to dominate public discourse, particularly among younger audiences shaped by social media and campus environments.
Adams’ response to this challenge has not been confined to analysis.
A businessman who built his career in Canada before making aliyah a decade ago, he has become one of Israel’s most prominent philanthropists, directing major investments toward institutions in the country’s south.
In the aftermath of Oct. 7, he announced $100 million gifts to both Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and Soroka Medical Center — moves he framed not as charity, but as long-term investments in Israel’s resilience.
The goal, he said, is not just to rebuild, but to reinforce.
Alongside those efforts, Adams has pursued a less conventional form of advocacy: using sports and culture to reshape how Israel is perceived abroad.
An accomplished cyclist and world champion in his age category, he has helped bring major international events to Israel, including global cycling races and high-profile appearances by figures such as Lionel Messi.
The strategy is to reach audiences that are not tuning in for politics — and introduce them to a different version of Israel.
“People are always surprised,” Adams said. “It’s not what they thought.”
That approach reflects a broader philosophy: that Israel must be strengthened not only on the ground, but in the way it is seen.
Adams’ worldview is rooted in his own family history. Born to Holocaust-surviving parents from Romania, whose journeys passed through pre-state Israel before settling in Canada, he grew up in a deeply Zionist home before eventually building a life in Montreal.
His decision to move to Israel later in life was, in his telling, less a break than a return.
“I always thought we would end up there,” he recalled his wife saying.
Now based in Israel, Adams has positioned himself as both a builder and a messenger —investing in the country’s future while trying to influence how it is understood beyond its borders.
His message to Jews outside Israel was direct.
“We’re one people,” he said. “Israel belongs to all of us.”
In the current moment, that idea carries added weight — not just as a statement of identity, but as a call to responsibility.
Uncategorized
Hamas Tightens Grip on Gaza, New Analysis Shows, as Iran War Delays Second Phase of Ceasefire
Hamas fighters on Feb. 22, 2025. Photo: Majdi Fathi via Reuters Connect
As the international community struggles to advance the second phase of an already fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist group is exploiting the war in Iran to tighten its civilian and security grip on the Gaza Strip and rebuild its military capabilities, according to a new report.
The Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center (ITIC) — an Israel-based research institute — released a new report this week warning that the US-Israel conflict with Iran and disputes over management of Gaza are delaying the implementation of the second phase of the US-backed ceasefire agreement, under which Hamas was expected to disarm as Israeli forces were set to withdraw from parts of the enclave.
The report also warned that such delays are giving Hamas a window of opportunity to rearm and further tighten its control over Gaza, complicating fragile efforts to move forward with the next stage of the truce.
ITIC’s new assessment shows Hamas has moved to reassert control over parts of the war-torn enclave and consolidate its weakened position by targeting Palestinians it labeled as “lawbreakers and collaborators with Israel.”
With its security control tightening, Hamas’s brutal crackdown has escalated, sparking widespread clashes and violence as the group seeks to seize weapons and eliminate any opposition.
The report further notes that Hamas’s confidence is on the rise across Gaza, visible in the increasingly public presence of armed operatives from both its military wing and security forces, underscoring the group’s tightening hold on the roughly 47 percent of the enclave it controls without an Israeli military presence.
Social media videos widely circulated online show Hamas members brutally beating Palestinians and carrying out public executions of alleged collaborators and rival militia members.
According to ITIC’s newly released report, Hamas is also rebuilding its military capabilities by smuggling arms from Egypt and producing weapons independently, while simultaneously consolidating civilian control through expanded police presence, regulation of markets, and the distribution of financial aid to residents in areas it governs.
Earlier this year, the US-backed plan to end the war in Gaza hit major roadblocks after proposals surfaced that would allow Hamas to retain some small arms — an idea strongly denounced by Israeli officials who insist the Islamist group must fully disarm.
Officials involved in the US-led Board of Peace drafted a plan that would allow Hamas to retain small arms while surrendering longer-range weapons as part of a “phased disarmament” process over several months, with heavy weapons to be “decommissioned immediately.”
However, key details about where the surrendered arms would go and how the process would be enforced remain unclear.
The initial framework also required “personal arms” to be “registered and decommissioned” as a new Palestinian administration takes charge of security in the enclave.
Israel has previously warned that Hamas must fully disarm for the second phase of the ceasefire to move forward, pointing to tens of thousands of rifles and an active network of underground tunnels still under the terrorist group’s control.
If the Palestinian Islamist group does not give up its weapons, Israel has vowed not to withdraw troops from Gaza further or approve any rebuilding efforts, effectively stalling the ceasefire agreement.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) currently occupies about 53 percent of the Strip, with most of the Palestinian population living in the remaining portion of the enclave under Hamas control.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has insisted the country will not accept anything less than the full demilitarization of Gaza, warning that any reconstruction or political transition in the enclave depends on Hamas relinquishing its weapons.
Under US President Donald Trump’s 20-point Gaza peace plan, phase two would involve deploying an international stabilization force (ISF), beginning large-scale reconstruction, and establishing a Palestinian technocratic committee to oversee the territory’s administration.
According to media reports, the ISF could total around 20,000 troops, though it remains uncertain whether the multinational peacekeeping force will actually help disarm Hamas.
Over the past few weeks, Israel has resumed military operations in the Gaza Strip aimed at forcibly disarming Hamas. The IDF’s previous operations during the last two years of war had been partly limited by efforts to protect Israeli hostages kidnapped by Hamas, the last of whom were released last year as part of the ceasefire.
On Tuesday, Israeli forces announced that several Hamas Nukhba terrorists were eliminated during a strike in central Gaza after troops intercepted the operatives while they were conducting a military training exercise in the area.
IDF forces in the Southern Command remain deployed at key locations in the Gaza Strip, with the army warning it will employ all necessary force to neutralize threats and maintain control across the territory.
This week, the United Nations Security Council met to review progress on the Gaza peace plan and the implementation of phase two, originally adopted in November under the fragile truce between Israel and Hamas.
According to Nickolay Mladenov, the high representative for Gaza on Trump’s Board of Peace, a transitional Palestinian governing body has already been established in the enclave, and a framework agreed upon by the guarantor countries — the US, Egypt, Turkey, and Qatar — has been presented to armed groups, which he said establishes “the principle of one authority, one law, and one weapon.”
“The National Committee exercises authority solely on an interim basis,” Mladenov said during a speech, referring to the transitional Palestinian government that has been established.
“The end state is a reformed Palestinian Authority capable of governing Gaza and the West Bank, and ultimately a pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood,” he continued.
The proposed plan would require all armed groups in Gaza to transfer their arms to a transitional Palestinian governing authority, starting with their larger-scale weapons and monitoring compliance before reconstruction begins, while allowing fighters to gradually return to civilian life.
Mladenov also confirmed that Indonesia, Morocco, Kazakhstan, Kosovo, and Albania have committed troops to the ISF.
“The people of Gaza want reconstruction, and reconstruction requires the decommissioning of weapons,” he said, describing this link as the framework’s “driving force.”
So far, there is no timeline or clarity on discussions with relevant groups, nor on any potential Israeli military withdrawal.
As of February, Israel was planning to resume military operations in the Gaza Strip to forcibly disarm Hamas, with the IDF is drawing up plans for a renewed major offensive.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz warned that Hamas will be disarmed by force if it continues to violate the ceasefire and pose a threat to Israel’s security.
“If Hamas does not disarm in accordance with the agreed framework, we will dismantle it and all of its capabilities,” the Israeli defense chief said this month.
However, with Israel focused on fighting Iran as well as its chief proxy Hezbollah in Lebanon, it appears a new offensive is unlikely to take place in Gaza in the immediate future.
Uncategorized
Sam Altman Shuts Down OpenAI’s Sora, Video Sharing App Notorious for Antisemitic Content
Three videos featured on Sora on March 24, 2026, promoted antisemitic stereotypes and violence against Jews. Photo: Screenshots
In a surprise move that has stunned industry watchers and killed a $1 billion licensing deal with Disney, OpenAI announced it would shutter Sora, the controversial video-generating app which drew condemnation last year for its unwillingness to stop the production and sharing of antisemitic content.
“We’re saying goodbye to the Sora app,” Sora’s X account posted on Tuesday. “To everyone who created with Sora, shared it, and built community around it: thank you. What you made with Sora mattered, and we know this news is disappointing. We’ll share more soon, including timelines for the app and API and details on preserving your work.”
Reflecting the seeming abrupt nature of the decision, OpenAI had published on Monday a “Creating with Sora safely” guide. The company claimed that its product “uses layered defenses to keep the feed safe while leaving room for creativity. At creation, guardrails seek to block unsafe content before it’s made — including sexual material, terrorist propaganda, and self-harm promotion — by checking both prompts and outputs across multiple video frames and audio transcripts.”
The guide stated, “We’ve red teamed to explore novel risks, and we’ve tightened policies relative to image generation given Sora’s greater realism and the addition of motion and audio.”
With the release of the standalone Sora 2 app in September 2025, The Algemeiner and other news organizations documented the antisemitic tropes emerging on the platform with one recurring visual depicting Jews chasing after coins.
Following the announcement of Sora’s shutdown on Tuesday, The Algemeiner reviewed the app’s feed and discovered multiple antisemitic videos within minutes.
The first from user @frankel944 depicts an elaborate 30-second narrative of an older Hassidic Jew with a long beard and traditional religious garb who demands a poor man’s $10,000 savings in exchange for moldy bread and soup. He complies, inspiring the Jewish man to then take the money, fly to Mexico, dance in a sombrero with a mariachi band, and then return to the US to say his prayers at the synagogue.
A second from @davidkline16 features a young man — apparently one of the user’s friends — walking in a synagogue proclaiming that he has been appointed the rabbi and inviting people to come and celebrate. A surreal, fleshy orb with a face floats in the background and starts to interrupt the warm greeting, menacingly yelling “Rapist! Rapist!” One of the recurring jokes that young people had used Sora to do was to transform their friends into Jewish converts.
The third is one of the most chilling as it depicts violence against Jews. User @orituviaabaselo felt compelled to create and share a video featuring a group of eight Hassidic Jewish men sitting at a table, speaking Hebrew, and eating challah in the middle of a dark road at night. Moments later a blue car comes barreling into the group sending them every which way. The clip ends with one of the Jews not concerned for his friends’ injuries, but asking where he can find his hat.
In October, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) published research from its Center on Technology and Society which revealed that among the multiple AI-video generating apps tested, the programs would respond to antisemitic, racist, or other bigoted prompts at least 40 percent of the time. The ADL’s analysts found that, compared to its competitors, Sora “performed the best in terms of content moderation, refusing to generate 60% of the prompts.”
In January, the ADL analyzed multiple large language models and found that OpenAI’s ChatGPT lagged behind Anthropic’s Claude in its ability to detect antisemitism.
Some analysts suspect that this intra-industry rivalry may have played a role in OpenAI’s decision to shut down Sora as part of an effort to focus the company’s resources on core business capabilities. Anthropic was founded in 2021 by former OpenAI staffers dissatisfied with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s attitudes toward the dangers of AI. In recent years its Claude large language model has developed hegemony among computer programmers and other technical workers.
The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday that OpenAI sought to pivot to focus more on “so-called productivity tools,” a category currently dominated by Anthropic, rather than continuing with the cost-intensive videos.
Farida Khalaf, a business analyst and data engineer who focuses on cybersecurity, wrote Monday on Substack Notes predicting what would happen the next day. “Meta shutdown Metaverse, NEXT will be SORA from open AI,” she wrote.
On March 17, Meta announced its CEO Mark Zuckerberg had chosen to shut down Horizon World, the virtual reality platform which he had previously backed so heavily he chose to change the company’s name in October 2021 from Facebook to Meta.
Khalaf drew the comparison, asking, “Remember the hype surrounding the SORA app release? It seems to be following a similar trajectory, and with costs running higher than its revenue, the sustainability of this model is questionable.”
Forbes estimated in November that Sora was costing OpenAI $15 million a day. “We have been quite amazed by how much our power users want to use sora, and the economics are currently completely unsustainable. we thought 30 free gens/day would be more than enough, but clearly we were wrong!” Sora’s head Bill Peebles wrote on X on Oct. 30, 2025.
In December, Disney had signed a $1 billion agreement with OpenAI to license 200 characters for inclusion in Sora. “As the nascent AI field advances rapidly, we respect OpenAI’s decision to exit the video generation business and to shift its priorities elsewhere,” said a spokesperson for the film company.
On Tuesday, Altman announced his refocused priorities on X.
“AI will help discover new science, such as cures for diseases, which is perhaps the most important way to increase quality of life long-term,” Altman wrote. “AI will also present new threats to society that we have to address. No company can sufficiently mitigate these on their own; we will need a society-wide response to things like novel bio threats, a massive and fast change to the economy, extremely capable models causing complex emergent effects across society, and more.”