AIPAC’s Anxieties
The Israel lobbies’ grip on U.S. politics has slipped beyond restoration since Oct. 7, 2023 due to the Zionist army’s own savagery in Gaza.
If Charlies Kirk’s well-documented defection from the Zionist cause confirmed one thing above all others, it is that the Israeli lobbies’ grip on American politics has slipped—measurably, and I would say beyond any kind of restoration—since the events of Oct. 7, 2023.
It would take more hasbara than the Israelis could ever produce to persuade me Kirk did not pay for his abandonment of the Christian–Zionist orthodoxy when he was assassinated before a crowd of conservative youth last Sept. 10.
Andrew Cockburn has an excellent piece on this question in the current edition of Harper’s, published under the headline “Turning Point.” Andrew’s subhead goes to the point of this turning point: “How the GOP consensus on Israel cracked.”
As he makes clear, Kirk’s desertion of the ideological temple wherein he had worshipped the whole of his life as a public figure was highly significant given his stature and influence. But it was symptom, not cause.
No, the Zionist army’s savagery in Gaza is the cause: This accounts for the now-evident fissures in the wall Zionists — Israeli, American, Israeli–American — have built to protect Israel from even the mildest expressions of doubt or dissent among conservative Americans.
A month after Kirk’s murder Cockburn stood outside an auditorium at Indiana University where he, Kirk, had been scheduled to speak and where Tucker Carlson took his place. “Christian values? Israel massacres innocents.” “Would Jesus ignore this? Will you?”: These were among the things inscribed on placards people held as they waited for the program to begin.
This betokens a breach not only among Christians who have long given Israel their unalloyed support. It also signals a generational divide that seems to widen with every poll taken since it was first detected.
The U.S.–Israel relationship, the censure of sympathy for Palestinians and support of their cause, the tiresome anti–Semitism-everywhere trope tone-deaf Zionists persist in trying to put over on the public: When evangelical Christians call all this into question you can safely call this a crisis.
No one can claim surprise to discover the American–Israel Public Affairs Committee, the most powerful and pernicious of the Israel lobbies, is in what looks like an advanced case of freakout. And as this year’s elections draw near — primaries, special elections here and there, the midterms in November — AIPAC is reportedly gearing up for what appears to be a full-on assault on what remains of America’s post-democratic political process.
It seems the year to recognize some bitter realities. Israel’s incessant attempts to subvert the United Nations, notably but far from only via the Board of Peace the Trump regime is pushing, its abuses of international law and the courts founded to adjudicate and enforce it, its running program of assassinations, its indifference to the principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity: Isn’t it time to acknowledge that AIPAC’s presence in the United States is of a piece with these transgressions?
That what Israel is doing to America — with money rather than drones and missiles and bombers — is a variant of what we watch in horror as it does to other nations and to international public space? The wholesale destruction of civil societies and law is the common denominator.
Remember the political fates of Jamal Bowman and Cori Bush, candidates for congressional seats in New York and Missouri respectively, in the 2024 elections?
Both ran in Democratic Party primaries and both were critical of Israel a year into its terror campaign in Gaza. AIPAC spent more than $15 million to defeat Bowman and $8.5 million to keep Bush off the Democratic ticket, and it succeeded in both cases. A lot of this money arrived in the campaigns of their opponents via the Lobby’s United Democracy Project, and the name of this super PAC tells you a little of what Zionists mean when they boast of their chutzpah.
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https://consortiumnews.com/2026/02/02/patrick-lawrence-aipacs-anxieties/