How the powerful pro-Israel lobby keeps controlling Democrats in the US

When members of a top body of the Democratic Party convened in New Orleans on April 9, they faced a simple choice: rein in the growing influence of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), a pro-Israel lobbying group with deep pockets, within their party or maintain the status quo.

Voting for silence, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) – the executive body of one of the two mainstream US political parties – decided against naming and shaming AIPAC for spending tens of millions of dollars to help pro-Israel candidates win party nominations in every electoral cycle.

By voice vote, they rejected a symbolic resolution condemning AIPAC-linked “dark money,” a term used to denote election-related spending in which the exact donor source is not clearly disclosed. 

The voice vote was apparently a procedural manoeuvre that spared members from casting recorded ballots.

The voice vote was apparently meant to save them from backlash by a growing section of the Democratic Party that wants to minimise Israeli influence in US politics, especially after Israel’s ever-expanding wars that have killed tens of thousands of people from Gaza to Lebanon and Iran.

Instead, the DNC passed a “blanket repudiation” of dark money without naming any specific group.

AIPAC is known for exerting an outsized influence on US politics by utilising massive campaign donations to candidates sympathetic to Israel.

Of the 365 candidates in the 2022 election cycle endorsed by AIPAC, about 98 percent ended up winning their general election races.

Despite DNC Chair Ken Martin vowing to “end the influence of dark money” in politics and “restoring power back to the people”, progressive voices among the Democrats saw it as something else: proof that senior party members remain addicted to AIPAC’s financial pipeline, even as a bulk of their own supporters demand campaign finance reform.

Nadia Ahmad, a former DNC member from Florida, tells TRT World that the rejection of the vote for change in New Orleans reflects a “procedural choice” meant to allow committee members to escape individual accountability.

“That tells you they understand the position is out of step with Democratic voters, but feel they cannot say so publicly,” she says.

Polls show Democratic voters want aid to Israel conditional on its compliance with human rights in Gaza, the occupied West Bank and the many countries it is bombing at any point in time.

Several 2028 presidential contenders have already pledged to reject such funds, Ahmad says.

“Yet, the national committee declined to align itself with where its own voters already are,” she adds.

Broader resolutions against “dark money” pass easily, but resistance emerges as soon as demands for reform touch upon “relationships (that) senior figures have spent years cultivating” with big donors, she says.

The DNC vote comes as AIPAC-affiliated ‘Super PACs’ – legal entities set up specifically to raise and spend money to shape election outcomes – are pouring $22 million into various Democratic primaries in Illinois, backing pro-Israel candidates while attacking those who criticised Tel Aviv’s genocide in Gaza.

Ahmad says AIPAC-affiliated Super PACs sometimes outspend targeted candidates ten-to-one, flooding airwaves with ads on unrelated local issues.

“Voters never learn the funding is coming from a foreign-policy-aligned network,” she says.

For incumbents, the message is clear: criticise Israel and risk eight-figure spending by the opposition in the next election cycle. For challengers to incumbents, alignment with AIPAC unlocks millions in cash, she says.

That dynamic has only grown costlier for AIPAC as civilian casualties in Gaza, Lebanon, and Iran have made unconditional alignment with Israel politically toxic in Democratic primaries, Ahmad notes.

Deep ties to big-donor networks 

Matthew Grocholske, chair of the Democratic Progressive Caucus of Florida, tells TRT World that AIPAC has spent millions of dollars to silence opposition to “endless wars and genocide”.

“They use various front organisations to fund television ads, field programmes, and mailers to force pro-Palestinian candidates not to have an avenue to get their message across,” he says.

Pointing to the record $14.5 million smear campaign against Congressman Jamaal Bowman in 2024 for speaking against the Israeli genocide in Gaza, Grocholske says the huge spending is evidence of the disproportionate power that the pro-Israel lobbying group wields in US politics.

“Despite most Americans opposing this dark money spending, AIPAC continues to influence policy while not facing condemnation,” he says.

Doug Rossinow, a history professor and scholar of American Zionism, traces the Democratic Party’s craving for AIPAC money to structural realities dating back many decades.

Since the 1980s, rich Jewish donors deeply committed to Israel have formed “almost the only affluent group in American politics committed to the Democratic Party”, he says.

“Therefore, their Zionist perspective became party orthodoxy,” he says.

Online small-donor fundraising – successfully used by Senator Bernie Sanders in 2016 – offers a potential alternative for progressive candidates to circumvent the influence of AIPAC-like lobbying groups.

But the current DNC leadership wishes to maintain support from both large and small contributors, he says.

Entrenched powerbrokers within the Democratic Party – like Chuck Schumer, James Clyburn, and Nancy Pelosi – continue to maintain decades-old ties to these big-donor networks.

“They are determined to limit the change pressed by younger progressives, who are disgusted with Israel and who see a financial alternative to big givers,” Rossinow says.

Mirvette Judeh, chairwoman of the Arab American Caucus of the California Democratic Party, says that the DNC leadership’s calculus is cold political pragmatism layered atop entrenched foreign-policy norms.

“The reality of our political system is that fundraising and avoiding well-funded primary challenges are often paramount concerns,” she tells TRT World.

AIPAC’s “significant financial resources” and established political infrastructure make diverging from its preferred stances “an immediate electoral liability”.

Beyond money, pro-Israel narratives in US politics have become “deeply embedded,” rendering party reform politically risky.

Judeh says all these factors have shaped a party that champions universal human rights in principle, but applies them selectively. 

“The Democratic Party and our government are conditional about human rights when it comes to Palestine and any Arab or Muslim country that is perceived as a threat to Israel,” she says.

Senior Democrats no longer take principled stands anymore, says Ahmad, the former DNC member.

Instead, they make risk-management choices in an environment where the downside of action is clearer than the upside. 

“They operate within institutional relationships built up over decades with colleagues, consultants, and state party infrastructure,” she says. 

“Moving away from them requires a renegotiation of professional networks people have spent careers building.”