THIS IS CORRECTED PIECE ON AIPAC COLLAPSE IN PITTSBURGH
My computer has a mind of its own. SORRY!!!!
Progressive Democrat Declares Victory in Pennsylvania Primary Despite Unprecedented AIPAC Opposition
AIPAC-backed opponent Steve Irwin has yet to concede, trailing behind by 600 votes with approximately 99 percent of the votes counted.
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Contrary to the Ha’aretz headline this morning the House election in Pittsburgh is too close to call. Progressive, African-American Summer Lee is only ahead by 600 votes but regardless this is a stunning defeat for AIPAC in its effort to purge the Democratic party of progressives, particularly progressives of color.
It is hard to know why AIPAC chose to make the Pittsburgh race its marquee effort in its first outing since creating a super PAC. It has been funding primaries and elections for over 40 years but stealthily and denying it with regularity. As a lobby, not a PAC, it had no choice but to either stop pouring money into Congressional campaigns or lie about it. It chose to lie.
But this year it announced that it was creating a PAC to directly fund candidates it liked, meaning candidates who pledged in a questionnaire and in interviews with AIPAC staff never, ever to criticize Israel. More important AIPAC set out to defeat those who wouldn’t take the pledge.
If AIPAC cared at all about the United States or Jewish people in the United States, it would have made sense to create a PAC this year. Antisemitism is at an all-time high. The rightwing Republican “Great Replacement Theory” has inspired attacks on Jews (and in far greater numbers, on African Americans) throughout the country. The worst of these took place in Pittsburgh where the deadliest attack on Jews in US history left 11 worshippers dead at the Tree of Life synagogue.
Additionally the Republican party nationwide has been taken over by members of Congress (and voters) who not only attempted the overthrow of the United States government in January 2021 but is dominated by those who hate Jews, African Americans, Muslims, immigrants, LGBTQ, etc.
Their bible is the so-called Great Replacement Theory which has been disseminated by Tucker Carlson but echoed by every single white supremacy and antisemitic group in the country and by most House Republicans, most notably the #3 Republican in the House, Elise Stefanik, from Albany, New York.
The terrorists who blew away innocent people in Buffalo, Pittsburgh and in dozens of other “incidents” around the country are on the record howling about replacement (“The Jews Will Not Replace Us”) with Jews taking the role of leading African Americans and other nonwhites and non-Christians to subvert the United States from within. In GOP circles another word for Jews is “George Soros.”
But AIPAC’s new PAC made clear that hate crimes was not their issue. Nor was insurrection. In fact, it endorsed over 100 rightwing insurrectionists, including some of their most prominent spokespeople in Congress.
Its issue was, as always, 6000 miles away. Their only criterion for support or defeat was loyalty to Israel. AIPAC’s motto is, in practice not officially, “Be As Antisemitic or Racist As You Choose. If You Say You Support Israel We Support You.” (This thinking has led me to envision a day when Jews are taken off to re-education or concentration camps and AIPAC defends those who order it on the grounds that “they are good on Israel.”
Here is AIPAC’s CEO Howard Kohr defending supporting those who “who are liberal on immigration and those who want to tighten our borders, and yes, those who disagree strongly on issues surrounding the 2020 presidential election.” The “yes” is there to emphasize that AIPAC considers those who it might “disagree” on whether Trump is still president as legitimate as those who it might “disagree” with on other issues. This is Kohr, the former Gingrich assistant. AIPAC salary $2,000,000. ]
All this takes me to the Pittsburgh House campaign on which AIPAC spent $3 million to smear as anti-Israel a black state legislator as anti-Israel (and by implication anti-semitic) because, get this, she criticized both Israel’s actions in Gaza and, even worse, said that as a Member of Congress she would not deal with AIPAC but rather with J Street. Add to that that AIPAC has been terrified of black women in Congress since AOC and the Squad came to office and wants no more Members of Congress like them. Their enemies list is heavily black and female.
Summer Lee reminded them too much of AOC so they spent more money on negative ads and mailings to defeat her than has ever been spent in a Pittsburgh Congressional race ever. $3 million. And they had as their candidate a candidate well-known in the Jewish community who, although not at all racist himself, allowed them to run a racist campaign against her. When called upon by the mayor of Pittsburgh to ask AIPAC to cease and desist, the AIPAC candidate lied and said he had no power to do so. Of course, he did. Other candidates have asked AIPAC to pull out of their districts and AIPAC complied. This time the candidate went all-in.
As of this morning, Summer Lee is in the lead. People power beat AIPAC money at least so far. But even if she loses in the end this campaign demonstrated yet again, and more dramatically, the pernicious role AIPAC plays in American and Jewish life. At a time when Jews (among others) are endangered by a growing fascist movement, at a time when every synagogue in America needs guards to protect it from the right, AIPAC is on the side of our worst nightmare. Why aren’t they spending their millions to defeat rightist antisemites and racists rather than to elect them?
The AIPAC crowd is only a tiny minority of Jewish voters. Only 4% (according to the American Jewish Committee poll even put Israel at the top of their concerns when they vote and 80% invariably vote for progressives). Unfortunately AIPAC has the money, its coffers filled by billionaires and its 100,000 membership dominated by Republicans, rightwing Orthodox Jews, and strange folks who feel more threatened by violence against Jews in the occupied West Bank than here, where they live.
Fortunately, J Street which supported Summer Lee, is breathing down their necks. You don’t have to ally with AIPAC if you care about Israel AND fighting racism, antisemitism and fascism. In fact, you can’t.
AIPAC is a threat to Jews and all who care about sustaining our community alongside our friends in other communities and in Israel too. But it’s not going away. Especially if its allies on the right succeed in restoring a Republican Congress and, in two years, a Republican president. But today I’m optimistic. Summer Lee just may win. And AIPAC has been exposed, yet again, as “bad for the Jews” and America itself.
