AIPAC leaders discuss 3 challenges to their lobbying activities in the United States

Washington

- AIPAC (The American Israel Public Relations Committee) - the largest and most important Jewish lobby organization in the world - began a meeting of its leaders at the national level yesterday, Monday, to focus on its strategy for the upcoming congressional elections, in addition to the consequences of an extreme right-wing government coming to power in Israel.

The meetings will run over two days and are expected to attract approximately 1,000 pro-Israel activists and senior AIPAC political leaders.

The meeting will include speeches by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and congressional leaders from both the Republican and Democratic parties.

Over the past six decades, AIPAC has made many gains that have strengthened Israeli-American relations, and this organization has maintained permanent neutrality between the two parties in Congress, keeping it away from any suspicions of favoring one party over another. However, this neutrality has been subjected to a major test in recent years.

AIPAC held its annual conference last time in early March 2020, with more than 15,000 attendees, and the 2021 and 2022 conferences were canceled due to the Corona pandemic.

Unlike the organization's annual conference, only its leaders from various US states participate in this forum, and it will not include any lobbying activities on Congress.

AIPAC faces challenges posed by the arrival of the most extremist governments to power in Israel and its impact on relations with Washington (Getty Images)

The dilemma of defending an extremist government

This time, the AIPAC forum is exposed to challenges that impose themselves on US-Israeli relations in light of the arrival of an extreme right-wing coalition government to power in Israel, which suggests growing tensions between Washington and Tel Aviv.

President Joe Biden's administration had criticized the Israeli Minister of National Security's storming of Al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied Jerusalem a few days ago, and the US State Department warned against expanding or legitimizing settlements.

The emerging government of Benjamin Netanyahu poses unprecedented challenges to its friends and supporters in Washington.

And a number of experts believe that the rise of the coalition, the most extreme and militant in the history of Israel, will make it difficult to obtain the unconditional support that Netanyahu requires and expects from American Jews.

On the other hand, the demands of some ministers of the new ruling coalition in Israel to impose new laws that diminish or question the Jewishness of most American Jews represent an expected clash point between American Jews and the new Israeli government.

Expected changes in the "Law of Return" suggest that the necessity of having one Jewish grandparent is not sufficient for new immigrants to claim Israeli citizenship, which would affect the vast majority of American Jews whose conditions do not correspond to the desire of the hard-line Israeli right to strictly apply Jewish law.

American newspapers also indicated great concern among American Jews about Avi Maoz heading the Office of "Jewish National Identity", who said a few weeks ago that he was "racist homophobic" and rejected "Jewish pluralism" and believed that "a woman's place is in the kitchen" and that "her main job is childbirth". and raising children.”

In light of these changes, it will not be easy for AIPAC and other American Jewish organizations to pressure inside and outside Washington to support the new government in Israel.

Leaning towards the Likud and the Israeli right

And while the political center of gravity has shifted to the far right in Israel, Prime Minister Netanyahu is making the mistake of imagining that the American political center of gravity is steadily shifting to the right as well.

Over the last decade, AIPAC has been closely associated with Likud and the Republican Party.

Netanyahu predicted that Republicans would dominate American politics in the foreseeable future, while most American Jews were still Democrats.

However, Christian evangelicals in America rejoice at the arrival and dominance of the right in Israeli politics, which gives Netanyahu the opportunity to ignore the Jews there.

It is expected that AIPAC will continue to defend the new government and its long-term relations with Netanyahu, and it is unlikely that many differences will emerge between them.

It will be interesting to watch how AIPAC plays the role of "justification" for Netanyahu's ultra-Orthodox associates.

For the first time, AIPAC supports a number of Democratic and Republican candidates in the recent congressional elections (Al-Jazeera)

The campaign finance dilemma

Throughout its more than 60-year history, AIPAC has not funded any candidates for congressional elections, but that changed last year when the organization formed for the first time the Political Action Committee (PAC) and donated $46 million to support 365 candidates from both the Republican and Democratic parties.

However, this leaves challenges arising from the candidates that AIPAC is spending to defeat, who are representatives of progressive currents in the Democratic Party, despite AIPAC's boast that 98% of its supported candidates won the recent congressional elections.

Generational change and the consequences of recession

The change of generations among American politicians is also a dilemma for the future of AIPAC's influence. There are only a small number of members of Congress who remember the birth of Israel and the success in its quest for survival, and many of them remember the wars of 1967 and 1973, and are emotionally attached to Israel.

While most members of Congress, young and middle-aged, do not know Israel except as a large regional military power armed with nuclear weapons.

A liberal Jewish activist, who did not wish to be named, told Al-Jazeera Net, "The greatest danger we have is that the young generation of American Jews no longer sees itself close to the idea of ​​the need to support Israel when looking at the formation and ideology of the new government in it."

On the other hand, some AIPAC leaders fear the consequences of a possible recession in the US economy, which could make it difficult to maintain or demand an increase in US military aid to Israel, which currently stands at $3.8 billion.

With all these challenges, the partnership relationship remains strategic between the United States and Israel, and on the political and diplomatic level, this relationship may face difficulties with the rise of the influence of the hard-line current within the Netanyahu government.