U.S.
representatives claimed their colleague, Rep. Ilhan Omar, was
anti-Semitic when she brought up AIPAC’s influence over members of
Congress.
by
Alex Kotch
Part
2 - Donations from AIPAC Members
AIPAC is
not a political action committee and does not donate directly to
political candidates, but it requires its members to donate to the
campaigns of certain members of Congress in order to receive
exclusive membership benefits. Doug Rossinow, an academic and author
of a forthcoming book on American Zionism, wrote in the Washington
Post that since the late 1970s, AIPAC “has informally
directed substantial campaign contributions toward chosen candidates
for Congress.”
The New
Yorker explained AIPAC’s role in the late 1980s establishing
allied pro-Israel PACs, which often had AIPAC leaders in charge and
“looked to [AIPAC] for direction” regarding campaign
contributions. AIPAC, which has generally been allied with the
Republican Party, reportedly recruited individual bundlers, who would
collect AIPAC members’ donations to direct them to the campaigns of
senators and representatives. “The goal was to develop people
who could get a member of Congress on the phone at a moment’s
notice,” wrote the New Yorker’s Connie Bruck.
On its
website, AIPAC details its “Congressional Club,” a group
of members who commit to donate at least $5,000 per election cycle
“in a clearly pro-Israel context” to “pro-Israel
politics.” “The Congressional Club is designed to
recognize politically active members of AIPAC who support pro-Israel
candidates for the House and Senate,” the group says.
Progressive
activist Ady Barkin wrote a Twitter thread on Monday, describing an
instance in which AIPAC’s political spending “was definitely
about the Benjamins.”
AIPAC is a central pillar of the occupation. Without Congressional support, the Likud/anti-Palestine/pro-occupation project would be radically undermined. AIPAC is the anchor of that support, and its money and Sheldon Adelson’s money are indispensable to the work.— Ady Barkan🔥🌹 (@AdyBarkan) February 11, 2019
It’s
difficult to quantify how much money going to political campaigns
each election cycle comes from AIPAC members. But prominent AIPAC
booster Haim Saban is one of the United States’ biggest political
donors, having given considerable amounts of money to congressional
campaigns and millions to super PACs and other outside groups that
spend heavily on elections to support or oppose political candidates.
Saban, who funds AIPAC’s semi-annual Saban Leadership Seminar,
donated $3.3 million to Democratic outside political spending groups
during the 2018 election cycle. In the 2016 cycle, Saban and his
wife, Cheryl Saban, donated $13.8 million to outside political
spending groups.
Republican
megadonor Sheldon Adelson split with AIPAC in 2007 after the lobbying
group supported an increase in aid to Palestine, but as recently as
2014, AIPAC’s fundraising arm was in business with an
Adelson-controlled company. AIPAC now supports ending aid to
Palestine.
Adelson
and his wife, Miriam, spent $123 million on the 2018 midterm
elections, all of it benefiting Republicans, by far the biggest total
of any American family, according to the Center for Responsive
Politics. Most of that total went to two GOP super PACs, the
Congressional Leadership Fund and the Senate Leadership Fund. The
couple’s prodigious donations benefiting Republicans earned Sheldon
Adelson direct access to President Trump and Miriam Adelson the
Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Both
billionaire donors have said that Israel is their chief focus.
“I’m
a one-issue guy, and my issue is Israel,” Saban has said.
“I’m
a one-issue person. That issue is Israel,” Adelson said in
2017.
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