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Democrats to weigh resolution condemning AIPAC, fueling concerns about ‘undercurrent of antisemitism’
(JTA) — The Democratic National Committee is set to consider a resolution at a meeting next week that “condemns the growing influence” of AIPAC.
The resolution also condemns large-scale outside spending in elections generally but calls out only the pro-Israel lobby specifically, even as other lobbies are pouring similar sums into trying to influence election outcomes.
The meeting is being held during an election cycle in which rejecting AIPAC support has become a defining issue in Democratic races. It also comes amid concerns from some Jewish Democrats — including ones critical of AIPAC — that the group’s emergence as a bogeyman in American politics is inappropriate or even antisemitic.
“I do think there is an undercurrent of antisemitism in the degree to which AIPAC seems to be vilified,” Rep. Dan Goldman told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency last month. Goldman has accepted an endorsement from AIPAC as he seeks a third term, but says he won’t take money from corporate PACs in this election.
The resolution, which is subject to amendments before it is voted on, specifically names AIPAC and its super PAC, United Democracy Project, as having been “one of the largest outside spenders in Democratic contests” in 2024. It also refers broadly to other “corporate money PACs” and sources of “dark money,” though it does not name any specific groups.
Committee member Allison Minnerly, who introduced the resolution, told the Intercept, a left-wing outlet, that formally distancing the Democratic party from AIPAC “could be one step toward” winning back voters who “might really not have felt represented or seen when it came to Gaza or seeing their party support Palestinian rights or stand against military conflict.” Minnerly also introduced a resolution last August calling for an arms embargo on Israel, which was defeated.
A recent NBC poll found that 57% of Democratic voters have a negative view of Israel, compared to 13% who have a positive view of the country.
Meanwhile, a growing number of the party’s congressional candidates — and politicians thought to be seeking its 2028 presidential nomination — are swearing off AIPAC, and crossing its red line of supporting conditions on military aid to Israel.
The group has also spawned opposition online. Track AIPAC, the social media watchdog that posts politicians’ pro-Israel lobbying campaign donation numbers, has amassed 442,000 followers on X since 2024.
At town halls and candidate forums, politicians on the campaign trail are often being asked whether they would accept an endorsement or donations from the group.
Alana Zeitchik, an Israeli-American advocate and writer, said she understands that candidates might be asked about AIPAC in those types of settings, and said that she personally “would love to hear candidates” reject all special interest and corporate dollars. But when they hone in on AIPAC “on their own accord,” she said, she views it as “a political strategy to feed the beast, this hyper-obsession with AIPAC.”
The proposed DNC resolution voices concern over “massive outside spending” on candidates based on their foreign policy positions, pointing specifically to AIPAC’s $14 million spend in a single Illinois primary. The threat of those expenditures “raises concerns about undue influence over democratic debate and policymaking,” the resolution reads, and in “shaping Democratic party positions.”
The resolution condemns “the growing influence of dark money and corporate-backed independent expenditures in Democratic elections.”
AIPAC has remained a major spender in this year’s midterm elections. The group, which is operating with the aim of electing a majority pro-Israel Congress, recently shelled out around $22 million in support of four Illinois candidates, three of whom it backed through shell PACs under different names. Two of its four preferred candidates won.
While it narrows in on AIPAC, the DNC resolution does not address other types of high-spending special interest groups, such as real estate lobbying groups or the burgeoning landscape of pro-AI PACs.
New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, who has previously received AIPAC donations but is rejecting all PAC money this year, told Politico last week that the particular attention paid to AIPAC has been “problematic.”
“There are Iranian Americans that bundle money. There are Turkish Americans that bundle money. There are a lot of ethnic groups that bundle money, and often for things that I don’t agree with. But somehow AIPAC seems to be drawing a lot of attention, and that’s problematic to me,” Booker said. “[AIPAC] is not the problem in America. The problem in America is money in politics.”
Adam Carlson, head of the progressive polling form Zenith Research, poked fun at Booker’s comments with a facetious tweet that dismissed Booker’s concerns, and pointed out the lack of an AIPAC-sized group for Iranian and Turkish Americans.
“Cory’s right. I am sick and tired of the mainstream media refusing to report on PERSIAPAC and TURKPAC spending hundreds of millions of dollars meddling in primaries to boost their preferred candidates,” wrote Carlson, who is Jewish. “It’s an antisemitic double standard, and he’s a hero for pointing it out.”
Goldman, like Booker, says he isn’t taking corporate PAC money in this election, but he did accept AIPAC’s endorsement. Goldman is currently facing a primary challenge from Brad Lander, a Jewish progressive whose attacks against Goldman have centered the congressman’s AIPAC endorsement.
While the DNC’s proposed resolution suggests that AIPAC is shaping Democratic party positions, Goldman asserted that his views are independent from his endorsements.
“I have personally pushed AIPAC very much to recognize that it is an organization that supports first and foremost the State of Israel and the U.S.-Israel relationship, but that does not mean that they should be unwavering in their support for the Israeli government,” he said.
He added, “I am going to continue to operate independently, based on my own understanding and nuanced view of the situation, and work towards a peace in the region and two-state solution and security for Israel.”
Other Democrats have said they turned down AIPAC because of foreign policy disagreements. In Illinois, Rep. La Shawn Ford said he met with UDP but did not receive its endorsement because he was unwilling to meet its requirement of supporting unconditional military aid to Israel.
Zeitchik said she is not a fan of AIPAC’s “really dirty” tactics, which have included spending on attack ads against pro-Israel politicians because they are open to conditioning military aid — but she, too, has concerns about the particular attention paid to it.
“I think that the hyper-obsession with AIPAC amongst progressives, and making AIPAC the bogeyman, the problem, has an undercurrent of what I’d call an antisemitic worldview, or an antisemitic reaction,” Zeitchik said.
Joel Petlin, the school district superintendent in the heavily Jewish village of Kiryas Joel, outside New York City, wrote that the DNC’s proposed resolution “singles out AIPAC for doing precisely what many other lobby groups are doing every day.”
He added, “If this resolution passes, the DNC can finally stop calling themselves ‘the big tent party,’ because it clearly isn’t large enough for American Jews.”
Similar accounts to Track AIPAC have popped up online, though none have taken off in the same way. Oil PACs Tracker was founded in 2021 and has 43,000 followers. An account called Melt ICE, which tracks candidates’ stance on ICE, has garnered 3,000 followers since being created in January.
Zeitchik said she appreciates how congressional candidates such as Jack Schlossberg, who is running in New York’s 12th Congressional District, have approached the issue by rejecting all special interest money without harping specifically on AIPAC.
“When I see Israel become a wedge issue, and politicians continue to push and make it a wedge issue — that, to me, is alarming,” she said.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Democrats to weigh resolution condemning AIPAC, fueling concerns about ‘undercurrent of antisemitism’ appeared first on The Forward.
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How Shabbat bound Lindsey Graham to Joe Lieberman
Lindsey Graham did not always know what time Shabbat started, but he always knew when it ended. That was the joke the South Carolina Republican made while remembering his close friend, the late Sen. Joe Lieberman, at a memorial service in Washington in 2024.
In his remarks, Graham said that while traveling around the world with his Senate colleague, Lieberman, an observant Jew and author of a book about Shabbat, always knew exactly when sundown arrived on Friday, no matter where they were. After years of traveling together, Graham joked, he learned to recognize when Shabbat ended on Saturday “so we didn’t have to do this anymore.”
This past Saturday evening, almost exactly as Shabbat came to a close, Graham died after suffering an apparent heart attack at his Capitol Hill townhouse. Emergency dispatch audio indicates first responders were called to his home at around 8:30 p.m. after a report of chest pains.
The two politicians from different sides of the aisle first became close when Graham joined the Senate in 2003, joining an already close friendship between Lieberman and Sen. John McCain, who died in 2018. Despite disagreeing on many domestic issues, Graham and Lieberman bonded over shared views about American leadership abroad, traveling together to the world’s most dangerous conflict zones in the years after the Sept. 11 attacks. The three senators, who became known as the “Three Amigos,” also made repeated trips to Israel.
At Lieberman’s memorial, Graham recalled one of their more memorable trips together, accompanying McCain during his 2008 presidential campaign to visit the Western Wall in Jerusalem. Graham said he was pinned against the ancient stones by photographers scrambling for the perfect shot and injured his knee. “They crushed me against the wall, and I began to wail,” Graham joked, referencing the site’s English name, the Wailing Wall. Lieberman, he recalled, helped pull him back to his feet.
Months later, during a meeting with the Dalai Lama in Colorado, Lieberman brought the Tibetan spiritual leader over to Graham and asked if he could heal his injured knee. The Dalai Lama placed a hand on it and asked if it felt any better. “No,” Graham replied.
“I didn’t think so,” the Dalai Lama quipped.
A strong ally of Israel
Israel occupied a central place in Graham’s political career. He was one of Congress’ strongest supporters of the U.S.-Israel alliance, pushed for a tough approach toward Iran and backed efforts to expand peace between Israel and its Arab neighbors. Axios reported Sunday that Graham spent his final weeks working on a renewed push aimed at normalizing relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel.
In a Sunday appearance on Fox News, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu revealed that he and Graham disagreed over Israel’s recent proposal to phase out U.S. military assistance in the coming years, amid growing criticism of aid to Israel from both parties. Graham “went ballistic,” Netanyahu said. “He said, ‘No way. You can’t do that.’ He was so concerned with our security, which he believed was your security, that he actually fought the prime minister of Israel on keeping America’s aid – or actually increasing it.”
As news of Graham’s death spread Saturday night, Jewish organizations and leaders mourned his passing and reflected on the legacy he leaves as one of the Senate’s strongest advocates for Israel and Jewish causes.
In his farewell to Lieberman two years ago, Graham concluded: “One of the best things that ever happened to Lindsey Graham was to meet Joe Lieberman. So until we meet again, my amigo, God bless.”
For those who watched their friendship over the years, it is hard not to imagine that somewhere beyond this world, McCain, Lieberman and Graham have found each other once again.
The post How Shabbat bound Lindsey Graham to Joe Lieberman appeared first on The Forward.
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I was there when the lights went out and New York was plunged into darkness
I’m the lifelong resident of a vast and complicated metropolis that smugly prides itself on never stopping. Subways, buses and cabs running day and night, bodegas and diners open 24/7, hundreds of thousands of people at work or out partying somewhere, bike couriers and truck drivers making deliveries — all in a town with a million moving parts, where the show always goes on — until, suddenly, it doesn’t.
I was reminded of that one evening not long ago in a drab Chinese restaurant uptown on Broadway, clutching a pair of wooden chopsticks poised to shovel another mound of chicken and walnuts into my mouth.
Music was playing softly over the house PA system. The melody suddenly sounded strangely familiar, but oddly out of place in those surroundings. I froze mid-bite, trying to place what I was hearing. Then it hit me. I glanced at my dinner companion Ann Aptaker, author of the Cantor Gold noir crime novels.
“Wow,” I said. “Do you hear that?”
She paused, tilted her head slightly, then raised an eyebrow.
“Yes,” she said. “It’s Threepenny Opera!”
Sure enough, the song drifting through the room was Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht’s wickedly jaunty tango, “Ballad of Immoral Earnings.” Even stranger, it was a track from my favorite production of the show: the Lincoln Center revival from decades ago, starring the late, great Raul Julia as Mack the Knife and Ellen Greene as his favorite prostitute, Jenny Diver.
“Of all things! What a weird song to play while people are eating,” I mused.
“I don’t think I’ve ever heard it in a restaurant before,” she agreed. “And certainly not a Chinese place.”
“They must have good taste in musicals.”
Shrugging, we resumed picking away at our dinner. A minute later another song from the same show began to play. We gaped at each other.
“They’re playing the whole album!” I sputtered. “What are the odds?”
Ann frowned and paused. then suddenly whirled to reach into the pocket of her denim jacket hanging behind her chair. She pulled out her phone, and the music instantly grew louder. We both laughed. She must have leaned back against her jacket and set off her music app. Whew — mystery solved!
But hearing those distinctive strains of Weill’s score transported me back to one of the hottest summers New York City had ever endured.
It was 1977, the year I attended an outdoor performance of Threepenny Opera at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park. My mother and a roommate from Pratt had joined me that night.
The Delacorte sits beneath the stone towers of Belvedere Castle, lit by floodlamps like a fairytale illustration, open to the sky and the sounds of the city beyond the trees. On a good night it can feel magical. On this particularly sweltering night, the air hung over us in the audience like a damp blanket as Philip Bosco, who had replaced Raul Julia for this summer staging, swaggered across the stage as Mack the Knife, and Ellen Greene reprised her role as Jenny.
And then — just as she was belting out her furious solo number, Pirate Jenny — all the lights shut off. Greene’s mic abruptly went dead, and the band lurched sourly out of tune before grinding to a halt.
We were plunged into pitch darkness. For a moment, there was silence.
Then the crowd began to buzz nervously. Was this part of the show? I’d seen the play several times before, and knew that it most definitely was not.
A few awkward minutes later, some of the cast reappeared wielding flashlights. While the tech crew worked on the electricity, the band filled the darkness with some lively jazz. Rubber-limbed dancer Tony Azito pranced around jovially in the flickering beams, easing the mood for a spell. But that age-old theater adage, the show must go on, was about to bite the dust.
The house manager finally stepped up on stage to make an announcement: “Ladies and gentlemen, we just learned that there’s been a massive power failure at Con Edison. It’s not just us; the whole city is dark!”
We didn’t know it yet, but this was the Big Blackout of July 13, 1977, and there we were, thousands of us stranded smack in the middle of Central Park. There wasn’t even much of a moon out that night, so it was really, really dark.
“Well, this is some pickle,” Mom said.
We wondered how the hell we were going to get out of there.
I vividly recalled the last big blackout in New York City, the one in 1965. I was just a young kid back then and safely at home, so it had actually been fun. While my mother lit a few Sabbath candles, my little sister and I roamed from room to room pretending we were in a haunted house. Meanwhile, our poor Dad had to trudge back to Brooklyn from midtown Manhattan — a five-hour hike in hot leather shoes.
But this time felt very different. I was far from the safety of home, trapped in the middle of what might as well have been a forest at night. Central Park is beautiful when you can see it. In pitch darkness it’s downright hazardous.
“Guess we’ll all just have to sleep in the park tonight,” I cracked. Neither Mom nor my Pratt roomie were laughing.
Thankfully, a phalanx of city cops eventually arrived to help guide us out. Audience members, cast and crew all joined hands as we carefully made our way along the park’s winding paths, stepping over roots and curbs, catching one another when someone stumbled. Our only illumination came from a few scattered police car headlights.
A walk that normally takes ten minutes took forever, but eventually we emerged onto Central Park West.
The scene was eerie. Streetlamps were dark. Traffic lights were out. Cars sat frozen in the intersections. Not a single apartment window was lit. For a city that never sleeps, it felt as if someone had suddenly flipped off the master switch.
Then I spotted something: “Look, the buses are still running!”
A city bus was rumbling slowly toward us, brightly lit inside. With the subways dead, getting back to my dorm in Brooklyn would have been impossible, so Mom’s place on the Upper East Side looked like the safest destination. She had temporarily split with my Dad and was living there with a roommate at the time.
The three of us squeezed aboard along with what felt like half the audience, and somehow made it across town to First Avenue. As we approached my mother’s high-rise, a dreadful thought suddenly hit me.
“Mom, what floor are you on again?”
“Twenty-five,” she replied grimly.
Of course both elevators were dead. We trudged up 25 flights of stairs in complete darkness, arriving exhausted and panting. My mother fumbled with her key, finally opening the door to reveal Sylvia, her gravel-voiced, seen-it-all Long Island roommate, standing there with her ever-present cigarette tip glowing in the dark.
“Come on in, darlings,” she rasped dryly. “Join the party.”
Sylvia had lit a few candles around the apartment, the only light we’d see that night.
Outside, the city was far from peaceful. While we tried to sleep on sofa cushions on the floor, one of the worst nights of unrest in New York history was unfolding in the streets below. Store windows were smashed. Shops were looted. Garbage cans were set on fire.
Lying there in the dim glow of flickering candlelight, hearing distant sirens punctuated by the sudden crash of breaking glass somewhere in the darkness below, I felt a growing sense of dread. An evening that had begun with music and theater had improbably ended with Manhattan plunged into darkness, its fragile machinery suddenly exposed.
By morning the city looked as though it had survived a world war.
This resilient burg has been battered and bruised over the years, enduring terrorist attacks, blackouts, blizzards, hurricanes, floods, garbage strikes, transit strikes, and the occasional collapse of its aging infrastructure. Yet somehow it manages to reset and lurch forward each time, improvising solutions the way Tony Azito danced in the dark that night at the Delacorte.
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Lindsey Graham, pro-Israel Trump confidant in the Senate, dies suddenly at 71
(JTA) — Sen. Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina who has been one of Israel’s staunchest supporters in Congress, has died at 71.
Graham’s office announced his death in a statement early Sunday morning, saying that he had died late Saturday after “a brief and sudden illness.” Graham had returned from Ukraine, where he met with Prime Minister Volodymyr Zelensky, the day before.
Graham’s death means the Senate and Republican Party have lost one of its most durable pro-Israel voices at a time when anti-Israel sentiment is on the rise in both places. In his more than three decades in Congress, first in the House and then in the Senate since 2003, Graham aggressively backed U.S. aid to Israel, advanced a hawkish line on Iran and met repeatedly with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in both Israel and the United States.
Netanyahu repeatedly said Israel had “no greater friend” than Graham in the United States. Graham’s most recent visit to Israel was in February, ahead of the U.S.-Israel war on Iran, which he later took credit for urging. “They’ll tell me things our own government won’t tell me,” he said of Israeli officials at the time.
Graham was also a vocal backer of Israel’s military responses to attacks by Hamas, including during the 2014 and after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel that triggered the war in Gaza and augured a period of declining support for Israel. On Oct. 8, he issued a statement calling for Israel to defeat Hamas “by any and all means necessary” and in the subsequent weeks drew attention for calling on Israel to “flatten the place.”
Graham continued to promote a two-state solution as it receded as a U.S. priority, but he also adjusted to reflect the mounting isolationist streak in his party. Last year, he made news for embracing Netanyahu’s announcement of a plan to “taper” U.S. aid to Israel, saying it should be done sooner than Netanyahu’s 10-year timeline.
Graham’s outlook on Israel fit into a broad portfolio that included helming the Senate Budget Committee and pushing for a stronger U.S. response to Russia. Graham, who never married and had no children, was up for reelection in November.
This obituary will be updated.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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