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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.
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Palestinian-American to challenge John Fetterman for Senate seat in 2028
(JTA) — Ahmed Moor, a Palestinian-American writer who has worked with anti-Zionists, is the first Democrat to challenge Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman in the 2028 primary.
Fetterman, who has faced sharp criticism from within the Democratic Party for his staunch support for Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, has yet to announce whether he plans to run in 2028. A defeat or retirement would remove one of the Democratic caucus’s most pro-Israel voices.
Moor, 42, enters the playing field with radically different positions on Israel, and on foreign policy in general, from those Fetterman has promoted. Claiming that the United States “funds wars based on corruption and lies and has turned its back on its own people,” Moor pledged on his campaign website to ensure “this never happens again.”
Moor, born in Gaza, moved as a child to Philadelphia, where he earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Pennsylvania. He completed a master’s degree in public policy from Harvard. He switched from finance to journalism, reporting in Beirut and Egypt for The Guardian and other outlets, and co-editing the book “After Zionism: One State for Israel and Palestine.” He also spent many years in Jordan, where he launched a peer-to-peer lending organization, before moving back to Philadelphia in 2021.
“A few years ago my birthplace was turned to rubble in a genocide funded by our tax dollars,” Moor stated, saying that this has occurred “with the support of politicians on both sides of the aisle who can’t find money for transit or removing asbestos from our schools.”
Moor, who has served on the Philadelphia Democratic City Committee, has never held public office. He says he is determined to address corruption, affordability, foreign policy and constitutional authority, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer, which first reported his candidacy.
Moor told the Inquirer that he was “not really running against Fetterman” but instead “running for the rule of law.” He acknowledged that he would face an “uphill battle” against Fetterman, who took office in January 2023.
Fetterman has irked some fellow Democrats by siding with Republicans on numerous issues, especially on Israel. He has also drawn praise from the pro-Israel community and Israel’s leadership. With Democrats securing a Senate majority of at least 54 seats, including two independents who caucus with the party, Democratic leadership will be less dependent on Fetterman’s vote when the new Congress convenes in January.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Palestinian-American to challenge John Fetterman for Senate seat in 2028 appeared first on The Forward.
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Northwestern launches civil rights investigation into club that banned pro-Israel group from its food festival
Northwestern University’s Office of Civil Rights is investigating a club that said it canceled its annual “Cultural Food Fest” after students objected to its initial inclusion of a pro-Israel student group.
Spoon University Northwestern, a student-run food magazine, wrote in an email to students that it was calling off its Nov. 6 food festival because of concerns about the participation of Wildcats for Israel, a club housed within Hillel that describes itself as focused on Israeli culture and society.
“There’s been a lot of disappointment expressed in and around Hillel today,” Michael Simon, executive director of Northwestern Hillel, told the Forward on Friday. “What should be an opportunity for connecting across differences and having really positive engagement got turned into a sort of political catfight.”
Students involved with Wildcats for Israel were initially “really excited” to participate in the fest, Simon said.
But amid student backlash, Spoon reversed course and disinvited Wildcats for Israel, Simon said. In a statement posted to Instagram, Spoon cited “the ongoing genocide in Gaza” to explain the group’s removal.
Yet even that exclusion was not enough for some student organizations. Northwestern’s Asian Pacific American Coalition; Alianza, the Latinx student alliance; and the Middle Eastern North African Student Association, issued a joint statement saying that they were withdrawing from the fest because of the original inclusion of Wildcats for Israel.
“A ‘culture’ born from the active land theft and genocide of Palestinians should not be recognized,” the student groups wrote on Instagram.
Spoon then cancelled the event altogether.
Now, Spoon’s status as an officially registered student organization has been frozen while the investigation into allegations of discrimination is being conducted, a Northwestern spokesperson wrote in an email to the Forward.
The investigation comes as Northwestern faces additional obligations to address and report allegations of antisemitism as part of its $75 million settlement with the Trump administration in November 2025. As part of the agreement, the university pledged that its Office of Civil Rights would publish annual reports with data about complaints of antisemitism, including investigative and disciplinary actions taken.
Spoon did not respond to the Forward’s request for comment.
In its email to students, Spoon said Wildcats for Israel was removed because of its status as “a political action group, not a cultural organization.”
Simon pushed back on that characterization of the club. “They’re not engaged in political advocacy or political work, certainly not in their current iteration,” Simon said. “They’re really focused on doing cultural and educational programming, connecting with Israel and with the Israeli people.”
The idea that Wildcats for Israel is considered political, while other student organizations opposing Israel are not, “appears to be a real double standard,” Simon said.
Still, Simon said the cancellation did not prevent Wildcats for Israel from having its own cultural food event — inviting students to the Hillel building on Friday to talk about what had happened over slushies in two flavors popular in Israel, limonana and iced cafe.
“They’re really turning to a place of being in community and supporting one another,” Simon said.
The post Northwestern launches civil rights investigation into club that banned pro-Israel group from its food festival appeared first on The Forward.
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Israel’s love affair with Trump may be over – with no other suitor in sight
Israelis were among the few groups outside America who genuinely liked Donald Trump, and they had persuaded themselves that the feeling was mutual. Now, as the American president pledges to terminate military assistance and blames Israel’s unpopularity for the Republicans’ electoral humiliation, they are confronting the possibility that their greatest supposed friend may become one of their gravest strategic liabilities.
In a 2025 Pew Research Center survey of 24 countries, 69% of Israelis expressed confidence in Trump to do the right thing in world affairs. Israelis saw a champion where much of the democratic world saw a menace.
Israelis, who tend to be more direct and plainspoken than other Western societies, were less inclined to be scandalized by Trump’s personal shortcomings. But mainly it was policy that made him so popular: Trump moved the American embassy to Jerusalem, recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights and cultivated a conspicuously warm relationship with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, despite his increasing toxicity around the world. Trump opposed Hamas and ultimately joined Israel in attacking the Iranian regime.
Still, warning signs were there – in the displays of U.S. dominance over decisions in the 2025 and 2026 Iran confrontations and in the Election Day announcement last week that Trump plans to terminate roughly $4 billion in annual military assistance to Israel this year.
The announcement threatened a cornerstone of Israeli security planning established under Barack Obama, whose administration negotiated a 10-year, $38 billion assistance agreement extending through 2028.
The precise legal and financial consequences remain uncertain, not least because Congress controls appropriations. But the political significance is unmistakable: The president whom Israelis regarded as their most dependable protector was proposing to dismantle an arrangement that even administrations regarded as unfriendly to Netanyahu had sustained.
Moreover, the aid is far more than a gift. Its greatest value is not financial but geopolitical: the unmistakable message to Israel’s enemies that Washington stands behind it.
As the dismal election results became clear, Vice President JD Vance highlighted a supposed demand among disaffected Republican voters to “change our relationship to Israel,” placing the alliance itself among the issues requiring political reassessment.
In Sunday’s 60 Minutes interview, Trump went further, identifying what he called a “great dislike” for Israel as one factor in the Republican electoral defeat.
Trump certainly has a point. A 2026 Pew survey found that 60% of Americans viewed Israel unfavorably, up from 42% in 2022, including 57% of Republicans under 50. Gallup found that, for the first time in its 25-year tracking, Americans were no longer more sympathetic to Israelis than Palestinians: 36% favored Israelis, compared with 41% for Palestinians. The longstanding bipartisan consensus is unraveling. Among younger Americans, the situation is even worse.
Whether the reason is a global propaganda campaign against Zionism, social media manipulation, Netanyahu and his noxious far-right allies, or Israel’s actions in Gaza and the West Bank are almost beside the point – the collapse in Western and U.S. opinion is undeniable.
Trump also asserted that “those countries that we’ve protected” from Iran – meaning Israel – “wouldn’t exist” without the U.S. and “are going to pay us back any and all costs that we’ve had for the war,” which was another major surprise and mystery that caught Israelis off-guard.
Whether this implies a demand that Israel reimburse the United States, and for precisely what, remains unclear. What is clear is that Trump has begun discussing a relationship Israelis considered existential in the language of electoral liabilities and financial transactions.
Writing in Maariv on Monday, veteran Washington correspondent Shlomo Shamir reported that senior Washington commentators described Netanyahu as having become effectively persona non grata in Trump’s inner circle – and that Trump’s seeming affinity for Netanyahu was “more a media relationship than a genuine friendship.”
The change in atmosphere in Israel has been extraordinary.
On Monday, Israeli television seemed preoccupied with little beyond the coalition negotiations following Israel’s election and the growing fear that the country might lose its most important international relationship.
Appearing on Channel 13, I argued that another Netanyahu government would have faced economic sanctions from Europe and even serious discussion of an American weapons embargo. This provoked very little disagreement.
“Netanyahu put all his chips on Trump, and it’s falling apart,” observed anchor Daniel Zilberstein. “It wasn’t only him, but the entire system,” replied Omri Rolls, an expert in monitoring and countering anti-Israel propaganda. “We put all our attention on the United States. Europe, we’ve completely given up on. All over the world, important elements are simply not on Israel’s agenda.”
The alarm was loud and clear this week across the Israeli political and diplomatic establishment.
Tovah Herzl, a former Israeli diplomat who served in Washington as liaison to Congress, captured the predicament in the title of her article in Maariv: “Netanyahu Bet on Trump — and Israel Could Lose Far More Than Money.”
“Israelis are unaware of the depth of the hole into which the country has fallen,” wrote Yedidia Stern, a leading expert on Israel-U.S. relations, in Ynet. “The hourglass has been turned over: we have two years to regain the legitimacy that has been lost” before a Democrat potentially wins the White House.
Ashley Perry, a former senior Israeli government adviser, wrote in The Jerusalem Post that Israel must urgently start arguing its case – “consistently demonstrating what Americans gain” in intelligence cooperation, joint defense development, investment, trade and Israeli contributions to scientific and technological progress.
Beyond all that, there is a general understanding that Israel will need some real policy changes – for example, cracking down on Jewish extremists in the West Bank. And it will need to court the U.S. Democrats and the Europeans once more – as it did decades ago.
There is a grim lesson at play, and it has more to do with morality than ethics.
Israelis are people badly traumatized by the conflicts that implacable enemies have forced on them. Over the decades, however, they took some pride nonetheless in what they believed was a moral high ground. It’s safe to say this has eroded, at least somewhat.
In a reflection of that erosion, one of Trump’s greatest attractions to Israelis – sadly enough – was his indifference to Palestinian human rights, an issue that had long complicated Israel’s relations with more conventional Western leaders. Trump was clearly untroubled by the West Bank occupation, the expansion of settlements or the absence of a credible political horizon for millions of Palestinians. In February 2025, he even proposed removing Gaza’s Palestinian population in its entirety and placing the territory under American control, a scheme whose breathtaking implications seemed scarcely to concern him.
Many Israelis overlooked the dark aspects of such absurdities, seeing only evidence of exceptional friendship. They overlooked the possibility that a president so utterly uninterested in Palestinian rights might also prove indifferent to Israeli interests whenever they ceased to coincide with his own.
They celebrated his willingness to discard diplomatic conventions – or even basic human decency – when it worked in their favor. They are discovering now that sometimes cliches are true: What goes around comes around.
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