AIPAC Talking Points Revealed
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks on a video from Israel to the 2019 AIPAC policy conference, at the Washington Convention Center in Washington, March 26, 2019.
Documents show that the powerful lobby is spreading its influence on Capitol Hill by calling for unconditional military aid to Israel and hyping up threats from Iran.
NATIONAL HARBOR, MARYLAND – This week, approximately 1,600 foot soldiers from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) congregated inside the garish yet functional Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center, for the PAC’s annual policy conference. It took place this year amid Israel’s bloody war in Gaza, which has left at least 30,000 Palestinians dead and is turning into a critical wedge issue in the 2024 elections.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed attendees by videocast, along with Israeli ambassador to the U.S. Michael Herzog. According to an incomplete speaker list, the entire Democratic and Republican leadership in Congress delivered remarks—Sens. Chuck Schumer and Mitch McConnell and Reps. Hakeem Jeffries and Mike Johnson. Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) and Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) were both in attendance, among other representatives.
In past years, the conference has been a media spectacle, with a widely disseminated lineup of powerful speakers to showcase AIPAC’s enduring political influence. This year, however, it was locked down, with few social media posts and broadcast speeches, largely because of the threat of disruptions from anti-war protests. The goal of this year’s low-key gathering was to fire up attendees for AIPAC’s 2024 agenda, before sending them off to Capitol Hill to strong-arm Congress on supporting Israel.
The Prospect has obtained documents from the conference that preview the PAC’s lobbying blitz on Capitol Hill this week. The documents reveal AIPAC’s legislative strategy and the talking points it will use to support an unconditional $14 billion military funding package that has thus far been held up, among other policy changes. They also include numerous positions on aspects of the U.S. response to the war that have not previously been made public, from abolishing the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) to opposing recent restrictions imposed by the Biden administration on Israeli settlers. There is no mention of a two-state solution.
“This is damning evidence that AIPAC is completely aligned with the far right of the Israeli government even as tensions emerge between Netanyahu and the Biden administration,” said Raed Jarrar, advocacy director at Democracy for the Arab World Now.
Though many of the policy positions are consistent with AIPAC’s past advocacy, this trove of files offers a rare glimpse into the conversations the PAC holds with members of Congress behind closed doors, and the arguments it’s deploying.
THOUGH THE PRIMARY MOTIVATION FOR THE CONFERENCE was lobbying, the event also informed members about the PAC’s congressional spending plans. AIPAC has pledged to drop over $100 million on campaigns this election cycle to defeat any congressional candidates critical of Israel.
This week, the PAC touted its prowess to members as “dollar for dollar, the largest contributor to candidates in the 2022 midterm elections,” via its super PAC United Democracy Project. One brochure even pulls quotes from critical articles in The Intercept and Slate as testaments to its pre-eminence as an electoral juggernaut.
AIPAC has long described itself as a bipartisan organization that endorses the full leadership of both parties, despite the fact that financial disclosures show that many of its top donors overwhelmingly back GOP candidates, including former President Trump. Yet in 2022 and this year, almost all of AIPAC’s electoral spending has come in Democratic primaries.
At the conference, the lobby did not hide its slant in campaign funding. In one pamphlet given to conference attendees, the only featured Democrats were from safe blue seats where they’d defeated a more progressive “anti-Israel” candidate in the primary, such as Reps. Haley Stevens (D-MI), Shontel Brown (D-OH), and Glenn Ivey (D-MD). The featured Republicans, however, either flipped their seats or represented highly contested frontline races held by only narrow margins. Those were Reps. Young Kim (R-CA), Don Bacon (R-NE), and Ken Calvert (R-CA).
It’s been clear for several election cycles that AIPAC might sway the electoral map more so for Republicans, but this document all but signals that directly to its members.
The pamphlet does try to refute charges that the lobby opposes all progressives. It takes a dig at its critics by claiming to have raised more money for endorsed Congressional Progressive Caucus members, at $1.8 million, than left-aligned groups Justice Democrats, J Street, and EMILYs List combined.
But the talking points promoted at the conference for its members to use on the Hill tell a different story. They’re exclusively directed at combating rhetoric and policy from Democrats, Squad members, cease-fire advocates, and even President Biden, who has only recently mildly criticized Netanyahu’s handling of the war.
The legislative packet is directed at defending Israel’s military actions in Gaza against any calls for conditioning military assistance, as well as the findings of the International Court of Justice investigation. AIPAC is also using the ongoing war and threat from Hamas to call for further sanctions against Iran, potentially pulling the U.S. into a broader regional war.
AIPAC is instructing members to make assertions of fact to congressional staff that are not supported by credible evidence other than statements by the Israel Defense Forces, according to experts who reviewed the documents. “They’re going to the Hill to repeat a foreign government’s talking points,” said Matt Duss at the Center for International Policy, a former policy adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders.
The lobbying files promote the familiar though contested line that “Israel does not target civilians.” This has been questioned due to the sheer body count of Palestinian civilians, women and children, during the war, compared to members of Hamas, along with the stated intentions by several Israeli officials to “eliminate everything” in Gaza. The IDF has justified the high casualty numbers by saying that Hamas weaponizes civilians as human shields. Yet the IDF has authorized airstrikes on sites with dense civilian populations such as hospitals and refugee camps, most recently at the “Flour Massacre” at the end of February, when the IDF opened fire on civilians gathered around an aid truck delivery, killing over 100.