Democrats toe a line on Israel as AIPAC’s grip on Congress starts to slip

For decades, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee operated as the quiet enforcer of a bipartisan consensus: Politicians of both parties supported Israel — AIPAC made sure of it — and the U.S.-Israel relationship was widely understood to be a non-issue in campaigns.

That arrangement publicly ruptured this week with a House floor vote that split Democrats, including their leadership, on whether to cut off military aid to Israel over its actions in Gaza and the West Bank.

The amendment was symbolic. Lawmakers in both chambers have rejected similar versions for years, and this one, like the others, was never going to pass.

But the numbers voting in favor of such measures have surged in tandem with the mounting Democratic primary wins by candidates who built their campaigns on opposing Israel’s war in Gaza, often over AIPAC-backed opponents. 

In May, a record 40 Senate Democrats voted against further military aid to Israel, a roll call that would have been unthinkable two cycles ago. On Wednesday, 103 out of 211 Democrats voted similarly on the House amendment.  

Some of those voting against the amendment to cut $3.3 billion in security aid to Israel, including Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., said they had concerns about its scope and political ramifications but agreed with its message.

Some of those voting in favor of cutting off aid, including Democratic Whip Katherine Clark and former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, said they didn’t actually want it to pass but cast their votes to mark the need for a fundamental shift in U.S. policy toward Israel.

“For the good of the Israeli people and the Palestinian people, it is clear that U.S. policy must change,” Pelosi said after her vote. “The United States must be a force for security and stability. The American people are rightly demanding an end to a perpetual cycle of war, and the Netanyahu government cannot maintain its current course.”

In April, a Pew Research Center survey found that 80% of Democrats now hold an unfavorable view of Israel, up from 69% a year earlier and 53% in 2022. Those feelings are showing up at the ballot box in Democratic primaries: 

Asked about its recent losses in primaries, AIPAC referred MS NOW to the group’s statement from June: “While disappointed that some of our endorsed candidates did not prevail, our community is proud to support pro-Israel Democrats and Republicans who stand for our values, and we are encouraged that voters in races across the country this primary season continue to choose serious, thoughtful leaders who support a strong U.S.-Israel partnership.”

The next major test comes in August, in Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary, where AIPAC-backed Rep. Haley Stevens faces Abdul El-Sayed, a Mamdani-aligned progressive endorsed by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. AIPAC has spent more than $49 million on Stevens’ behalf, while El-Sayed has repeatedly ruled out AIPAC money.

For a generation of Democratic politicians, AIPAC’s endorsement was an asset and its opposition a campaign-ending threat. Criticism of the group or its mission risked being labeled antisemitic.

“Twenty years ago, everybody acknowledged how powerful AIPAC was and hardly anyone was willing to take it on or defy what it wanted. There was even something of a taboo talking about it,” said Stephen Walt, a professor of international affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School and co-author of “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy.”

Now, for a growing share of the party’s electorate, that calculus has reversed. For some Democratic voters, AIPAC’s involvement in a race is itself a reason to vote against the candidate it backs. A candidate’s public opposition to both AIPAC and to Israel’s policies, on the other hand, is seen by some as a sign of “moral clarity and moral courage,” said Usamah Andrabi, communications director at Justice Democrats, the progressive PAC that helped elect Ocasio-Cortez.

AIPAC remains influential, but “it’s no longer an unchallengeable leviathan,” Walt said, likening it to any other domestic lobby, such as the National Rifle Association.

“It’s pretty open now to ask serious questions about the nature of the U.S. relationship with Israel, the amount of support that we give it — both military aid and diplomatic backing,” said Walt, who has had to defend his work against criticism from pro-Israel groups.

For Democrats, the reckoning began in 2024, when President Joe Biden’s campaign was dogged by protesters pressing his administration to push for a ceasefire in Gaza and an embargo on sending arms to Israel.

The human toll of Israel’s response to the Hamas attack — which killed more than 20,000 Palestinians in Gaza within the first three months, a toll that has since reached at least 73,000, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry — spurred the creation of the Uncommitted movement, which sought to register disapproval of Biden’s Middle East policies by urging Democratic voters to support “uncommitted” rather than Biden on their primary ballots. After he withdrew from the presidential race, many in the movement carried their opposition forward in declining to support Vice President Kamala Harris.

Then came Mamdani, who built his 2025 New York mayoral campaign in part on open support for Palestinians and opposition to U.S. military aid to Israel. He did not flinch from calling Israel’s actions in Gaza a genocide, and went from polling at 1% to winning by 9 points in the city with the largest Jewish population in the country.

Mamdani’s win was more than a long shot victory. It was evidence that a pro-Palestinian message could be an asset rather than a liability in a Democratic primary. The message for the rest of the party was hard to miss: On Israel, the primary electorate had begun rewarding the candidates willing to criticize its policies, and punishing those who wouldn’t.

That pressure has reshaped how some Democratic elected officials talk, even those closer to the ideological center. Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, a prominent 2028 White House prospect, has been visibly recalibrating. In a March “Pod Save America” interview, he likened Israel to an “apartheid” state and said the U.S. had no choice but to reconsider military support.

Weeks later, he told Politico he regretted the word and drew a line many in the party, like Pelosi, are trying to draw: “I revere the state of Israel. I’m proud to support the state of Israel. I deeply, deeply oppose Bibi Netanyahu’s leadership.” On accepting AIPAC money, he was unequivocal: “Never have and never will.”

There are still plenty of Democrats who proudly accept AIPAC’s support and win with it. Rep. Greg Landsman of Ohio raked in $593,169 from AIPAC-affiliated groups and individuals this cycle. His primary opponent tried to tag him “Genocide Greg” for his full-throated support of Israel; Landsman carried 68% of the vote.

Although Landsman speaks passionately about the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, which he calls “awful,” his voting record reflects continued support for Israel.

“I just think it’s really important for Israel to maintain its ability to defend itself. And sometimes it means getting in front of issues as opposed to sitting there and waiting for people to attack you,” Landsman told MS NOW.

But he too pointed to Netanyahu rather than Israel itself as the problem, and agreed that “there should be a debate” about what the U.S.-Israel “partnership looks like.”

The change has not been confined to the left. A month ago in Kentucky, Rep. Thomas Massie lost his primary to Ed Gallrein, a former Navy SEAL who was backed by Trump and was the beneficiary of more than $9 million in AIPAC-affiliated spending. Massie — a seven-term incumbent and one of the few Republicans willing to break publicly with Trump — wanted everyone to know who he blamed.

Facing his supporters on primary night, Massie opened with a joke about the man who had just defeated him. “I would have come out sooner,” the Kentuckian said, “but I had to call my opponent and concede, and it took a while to find Ed Gallrein in Tel Aviv.”

The line drew laughs. But it also touched on an old and ugly insinuation — that a rival’s true loyalties lie abroad — even as it captured something real about a fault line now running through the Republican coalition.

Massie, who sponsored the most recent amendment to cut off aid to Israel, drew the ire of AIPAC, which denounced him as a troublemaker seeking to undermine U.S.-Israeli relations.

“We are deeply appreciative of the 314 Republicans and Democrats who voted to reject Thomas Massie’s latest anti-Israel effort and are disappointed by the 103 Democrats who voted with Massie to weaken America and our ally Israel,” AIPAC posted. “This so-called messaging vote on Israel’s security sends a dangerous signal to both our allies and our enemies around the world.” 

Some of the conditions that produced the New York sweep are also contributing to this: a Republican electorate that, while still broadly supportive of Israel, is fracturing at its generational edges. That same Pew Research Center survey from April found that 57% of Republicans under 50 now view Israel unfavorably, up from 50% the year before; in both parties, majorities of voters under 50 now rate Israel negatively.

A bloc of prominent MAGA figures — former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly and former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene among them — have broken with Trump in his second term. Among the reasons, by their own account, is that they no longer believe the U.S. should support Israel unconditionally.

There are notable differences in the forces reshaping the two parties, however.

Democrats are responding to a base that increasingly views the war in Gaza as a moral failure; Republicans are splintering along generational lines and around a MAGA media ecosystem newly willing to question the alliance. 

But the two currents converge on the same institution: For decades, AIPAC helped set the boundaries of acceptable debate over Israel in American politics. Those boundaries are now being tested from both sides at once — and increasingly, they are not holding.

Erum Salam is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW, with a focus on how global events and foreign policy shape U.S. politics. She previously was a breaking news reporter for The Guardian.