The Limits of the Israel Lobby

Kamala Harris is hurting herself by willfully and aggressively alienating Muslim and Arab American voters. It's not easy to explain all of the reasons, but it's not because of AIPAC.

Paid subscriptions sustain this work, and for this newsletter to continue and thrive, there is a real need for more paid subscribers. So, if you have the means and motivation to become a paid subscriber, it will allow me to continue to not only produce this material, but to expand video interviews with prominent figures in policy and academia, continue to advocate in Washington and around the world for a better foreign policy, and more. All your support is appreciated, and if you don’t have the means to pay for a subscription or donate in support, sharing this newsletter and helping to bring in more subscribers is great too!

To become a free or paid subscriber, just click this button.

You can also support this site with a one-time donation, rather than—or in addition to—a subscription, through CashApp, by clicking this button.

To share this newsletter with your friends, just click this button.

---

Note: This is an edited version of this article. You can read the full paper at ReThinking Foreign Policy by clicking here.

In a presidential election where policy toward Israel is more important than it has ever been before, we are seeing a clear demonstration of the limits of the influence of the pro-Israel lobby. For Kamala Harris, her support for Israel’s genocide and aggression have been net negatives.

Some of this might be out of her hands. She does not make foreign policy; she can only advise about it. Indeed, reports have been leaked that Harris has been among those trying to persuade Joe Biden to do more for the people of Gaza.

But that argument has become less convincing as Harris’ campaign has moved to the right, repeatedly and aggressively insulted Muslim, Arab, and Palestinian Americans, and consistently fought against any perception that she has any disagreements with Biden on this issue at all.

For his part, Donald Trump accepted a huge donation from Miriam Adelson with the stipulation that he back Israel’s annexation of the West Bank. He has called for Israel to accelerate the genocide in Gaza to “finish the job” there. Trump’s appeal to his Christian Nationalist/Christian Zionist base is clear. Unlike Harris, he has faced no calls from his constituency to change his policy at all.

Speaking for myself, I live in a  solid blue state, so I will vote for neither of these candidates, and Harris will win my state anyway. But those who live in swing states deserve a better choice than having to decide between a facilitator of genocide who promises more of the same and a fascist wannabe dictator whose incompetence only magnifies the dangers of his autocratic tendencies.

Harris is endangering her campaign with her contempt for Palestinian life, her indifference to the suffering, and her refusal to even hint that she might behave any differently from her genocidal boss.

There are those who believe that the cause of this is the “Israel Lobby.” This debate over the impact and role of the lobby has been raging for decades. It touches on questions of the policymaking process, which is opaque for most, what influence powerful lobbying groups have, and how that influence manifests.

AIPAC, the main figure in the pro-Israel lobby, is one of the most effective and impactful lobbies in Washington. But this is a case where that explanation just doesn’t fit, and it’s worth examining why that is the case.

Is American Middle East policy out of step with its other foreign policies?

The history of the United States clearly demonstrates that it needs no lobbying force to pursue horrific, genocidal policies. This country was built on genocide and the most brutal form of slavery, crimes which, to this day, we have refused to make amends for.

More recently, we can look at Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, Chile, Niger, Somalia, Lebanon, and many other examples. The devastation of the globe by American violence far surpasses the record of any other country in history, despite our relatively youthful age as a state. So, let’s dispense with any notion that if AIPAC and its ilk didn’t exist, we would have a good or benign policy toward Palestine.

Where the Lobby has power and where it doesn’t

AIPAC, Christians United for Israel, other political actions committees, and various nonprofits, like pro-Palestinian rights advocates, have two places where they can exercise influence: elections and the public discourse.

It would be a mistake to believe that electoral politics and public opinion do not impact policymakers in the Executive Branch, led by the President. But it would be equally incorrect to assert that they have the kind of influence in those meeting rooms that they have in Congress. It simply isn’t the case.

I won’t run the whole argument here, but I would refer you to a piece I wrote in 2014, for the Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP), The Cold Realities of US Policy in Israel-Palestine. That piece explains how geo-strategic concerns, and for the U.S., imperial concerns, dominate foreign policymaking.

I’ve spoken with many people who have been involved in policymaking in the White House, State Department, and Defense Department during my more than two decades of work in foreign policy. That has included ambassadors, top advisers to the President, and other high-ranking officials, as well as many of their staffers.

They have uniformly told me that domestic politics play a crucial role in the discussions about policy. Indeed, many have said that domestic politics is where those deliberations would begin every day. But ultimately, it was always the perception of national interests that determined key decisions, with domestic concerns being one part of that conception of “national interests.”

What makes Israel particularly unusual is the laws that have been passed by Congress about it.

For example, in 2008, the Arms Export Control Act was amended to require that the President ensure that Israel is sufficiently equipped “to counter and defeat any credible conventional military threat from any individual state or possible coalition of states or from non-state actors.”

That law means that Israel must always have a “qualitative military edge (QME)” over all the Middle East countries put together and that any American aid or arms sales to other countries in the region cannot bring Israel’s QME under that level.

The law limits the president’s options, and it means that even a successful advocacy campaign to stop or even pause arms shipments to Israel would then have to resolve the conflict between the laws that campaign would rely on (compliance with international law and human rights norms), which are part of the Arms Export Control Act, and this amendment which is another part of the very same Act.  

Ultimately, however, presidents have a lot of power. Barack Obama decided he wanted to forge the Iran nuclear deal, and he succeeded. AIPAC fought a bitter battle against it, and Republicans were only too eager to work to undermine what would be Obama’s signature foreign policy achievement.

But in the end, despite what was perhaps the fiercest struggle by advocacy groups against a plank of a president’s foreign policy in history, the power of the White House was too much, and Obama was able to get the deal done, and he did it despite both houses of Congress being controlled by the Republicans.

Presidents can do that, and anyone who thinks that Joe Biden is somehow faced with an insurmountable adversary in AIPAC and that is why he is supporting a genocide is deeply mistaken. His support of genocide is a choice, one he makes every day. The President of the United States is not helpless before any lobbying or advocacy group, much less one like AIPAC, whose resources, though considerable, are hardly comparable to some of the really big PACs.

Biden’s lock-step support for Israel’s genocide has nothing to do with the Lobby

Ultimately, AIPAC and the other pro-Israel groups have one weapon to use in Washington: elections. All the money, the ads, the media activism all come down to winning or losing elections.

I see many comments about Biden being an “AIPAC shill” or “afraid to go up against AIPAC.” It makes no sense in this case. Harris is losing votes because of her stance on Gaza, and polls that have looked into this have shown she’d get a bump if she took a stand against Israel and for an end to the genocide.

What more can AIPAC possibly threaten Biden or Harris with? AIPAC does not have unlimited resources, and it spent huge, absolutely unprecedented amounts to defeat Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush, both of whom were courageous people who often took principled stances with little regard for electoral consequences. As such, they were in vulnerable political positions that AIPAC still had to spend enormous amounts of money to take advantage of.

Harris, like Biden, is a politician through and through and does not go out on limbs. They stay safe, or at least they follow the path they perceive as safer. For Biden, as is well known, he needs no AIPAC to make him a blind supporter of Israel. This is a man whose hatred of Palestinians runs so deep it even once shocked no less a person than Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin.

Harris has refused to distance herself from Biden, but she is not the ideologue with a romanticized view of Israel that Biden is. I expect Harris will back off from Biden’s radical approach to Israel and take up one that is more traditionally Democratic. That means, of course, still heavily biased in favor of Israel and still largely indifferent to Palestinian suffering, but I do not think she will be as well disposed to Israel’s wildly destabilizing behavior as Biden is.

All that said, Harris, when she was in the Senate, had a warm relationship with AIPAC, and her husband, Doug Emhoff, is a notable figure in the Jewish and pro-Israel communities. Emhoff’s reputation is that of a liberal Zionist someone not very inclined toward Netanyahu and the Israeli right. That, incredibly, still leaves him to the left of Joe Biden.

I can’t prove that Harris will be any better than Biden, and Harris has gone out of her way to alienate, aggravate, and chase away supporters of Palestine, Muslim- and Arab-Americans, and progressive voters at every turn. She has not disguised her contempt for Palestinians and their supporters. So even my extremely low expectations of her may be too optimistic.

Pro-Israel money has been basically split between her and Trump, and Harris has plenty of major pro-Israel individual donors. In any case, for all the stories about pro-Israel money in elections, many other industries give far more (the numbers on this list FAR outpace pro-Israel giving).

Harris is clearly getting horrible advice from the usual cadre of “political strategists” that have done so much damage to the Democrats in recent years. Given that she has been torpedoing her own campaign by shunning progressives and embracing the worst kinds of conservatives, Harris’ campaign looks a lot like the one Hillary Clinton ran in 2016, and she may believe that doing so is a winning strategy (spoiler alert: it’s not).

There was virtually no risk in allowing a Palestinian-American state legislator to speak at the Democratic National Convention this summer, or to express in more forceful terms that she wants Israel to agree to a ceasefire, calling out Netanyahu as the obstacle that everyone, including many of Israel’s supporters, know he is. But she has refused to take even these meager steps.

Whatever the explanation, the idea that the Israel Lobby is the main reason simply doesn’t fit the facts. They are among the most influential lobbies in Washington, on par with any lobbying group. And in terms of foreign policy no other actor comes close. But in the end, they have power in specific areas and can only go so far in determining policy. It doesn’t do to underestimate the Israel Lobby. But exaggerating its power actually makes it more influential, since a great deal of their power depends on how powerful they are perceived to be, rightly or wrongly.

When perception is reality, it is important to try to be as realistic as possible. Whatever is motivating Harris’ self-immolating strategy, it’s not a Lobby.

---

My Latest Articles

Interview: Background Briefing With Ian Masters

I spoke with Ian Masters about the attempt by Israel and the Republicans to claim that Kamala Harris had confirmed a genocide in Gaza. Wish it were true, but instead, the disingenuous attack just showed how little Palestinian lives mean to both Democrats and Republicans.

Background Briefing, October 21, 2024

Arab states are coming together to prevent a regional war, will the U.S. listen?

As Israel expands its war to Lebanon and is threatening Iran as well, there are important signs that Arab states in the region are finally stepping in to prevent a broader regional war. Will the Biden administration listen?

No, the U.S. is not ‘putting pressure’ on Israel to end its war

A letter from the Biden administration to Israel this week threatening to possibly withhold weapons raised hopes among some, but the delivery of a missile defense system and deployment of U.S. soldiers sent the real message.

If Harris loses, she will have only herself to blame

The Blinken-Austin letter provided a route for Harris to separate herself on Gaza without actually going against Biden’s policy, simply by advocating for the message his own cabinet members sent to Israel. She still refuses to take it.

---

News Roundup

Media Blackout on Leaked U.S. Intelligence Docs

By Ken Klippenstein, Substack, October 21, 2024

The Murderous Logistics of Israel’s Ethnic Cleansing Campaign in Northern Gaza

By Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Abubaker Abed, Dropsite News, October 23, 2024

Inside the siege of northern Gaza, where ‘death waits around every corner’

By Mohammed R. Mhawish, Ola Al Asi, and Ibrahim Mohammad, +972 Magazine, October 23, 2024

Gaza: Israeli strikes delay polio vaccine campaign in the north

UN News, October 23, 2024

No Hezbollah assets found in Lebanon hospital facing Israeli bombing

By Hannah Davis, Middle East Eye, October 23, 2024

What Sinwar’s death reveals about war and peacemaking in Palestine

By Rami G. Khouri, Al Jazeera, October 22, 2024

‘Arabs Disappear’ – Israeli Senior Ministers Declare Intent to Build Settlements in Gaza

By Robert Inlakesh, Palestine Chronicle, October 23, 2024

As always, follow me on:
Twitter @MJPlitnick
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/MitchellPlitnick
Bluesky @mjplitnick.bsky.social
Threads @mjplitnick
Mastodon @MitchellPlitnick@journa.host
for my latest hot takes, comments, and news updates.