In this year's midterm elections, AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobbying group, has spent a record amount of money mostly in Democratic primaries to oust candidates or support candidates based on a changing definition of what it means to support Israel. Today, my colleague Jonathan Mahler explains how this has created a new litmus test for the left... Well, I have been covering the US-Israel relationship kind of in one form or another for decades, and this looks to me like a very different moment. For the first time you have a lot of politicians coming out very publicly and in some cases aggressively putting distance between the US and Israel. That was for decades unheard of. That was political suicide. The Republican Party is still really by and large pro-Israel. And that is not so much the case anymore on the Democratic side, and that is a huge paradigm shift. AIPAC was actually a really unifying force in American politics. AIPAC was something that both Republicans and Democrats could agree on. It was truly a bipartisan group. AIPAC could say, and did say, that America's interests and Israel's interests are perfectly aligned. Israel is the one real democracy in the Middle East, so Israel shares your democratic values. And AIPAC could also say that Israel is a vital strategic ally, particularly during the Cold War... So, AIPAC could sort of lean on all of that to make its case to both Democrats and Republicans... Over time, it's meant billions of dollars in military aid. In fact, Israel has long been the largest recipient of US foreign aid, period. It's allowed them to buy fighter jets, their Iron Dome defense system, so much of the Israeli military apparatus is in part a product of that US aid. But, it's also been political support on the world stage, with the US really firmly backing Israel for decades and decades. You know, of course, no relationship is perfect, so over the years, there would be minor dust-ups between Israel and the United States, and AIPAC would have to manage those moments... but nothing really major, nothing enduring until 2015. In 2015, something really kind of seismic happened for the US-Israel relationship and in turn for AIPAC. And that is President Obama's nuclear deal with Iran... Which Israel was furious about, Prime Minister Netanyahu really did not want to happen, but Obama was going ahead with it anyway. And so in this moment, the Republicans in Congress invite Bibi to come speak before Congress. A real poke in the eye to Obama who said that he did not want this to happen. But Bibi accepts the invitation. He comes to Congress. He uses that moment to inveigh against this nuclear deal. And that moment put AIPAC in a really difficult situation because now they're faced with the Prime Minister of Israel, the leader of the country that they're here to defend, is really going after the President of the United States, really undermining him, and they have to make a choice. I mean, are we going to side with Israel or are we going to side with the President? And they chose Israel. They agreed with Bibi's take on it, and they tried to defeat it.

So, that was the first big inflection point in 2015. The next one came in 2018 when we saw the election of the squad. What people are starting to see, at least in the occupation of Palestine, is increasing crisis of humanitarian condition. Will you vote against US military aid for Israel? Absolutely. For me, US aid should be leveraged. We think of Israel as the only democracy in the Middle East, and as such, we have to make sure we're holding it to that standard. This was a group of progressive lawmakers who were willing to say things about Israel, critical things about Israel. They support the movement known as BDS, which calls for a boycott of Israel until property is returned to Palestinians. And to sort of begin to try to redefine the American-Israel relationship. I mean, no one had ever gone there in this way before. You'd had isolated critics of Israel elected to Congress before, but you definitely never had a block of them in Congress, and especially ones who were young, popular, and progressive. This was going to be a problem for AIPAC, and so the question becomes, what is AIPAC going to do about the arrival in Congress of this block of outspoken critics of Israel? And what if this is just the beginning?

Yeah, so what's happened in 2026 is is really been kind of fascinating because AIPAC has again gone out and decided to spend big in various races. But what has happened is that AIPAC has had to shift its strategy. And what they've had to do in 2026 is because so many moderate Democrats are now starting to question America's unconditional support for Israel. AIPAC has had to what has at least decided to target moderate Democrats. Moderate Democrats who in many cases consider themselves to be supporters of Israel, consider themselves to be pro-Israel. And that has made AIPAC even more polarizing. AIPAC has created what is essentially a kind of a basic litmus test for what it means to be pro-Israel. And that litmus test is if you question unconditional American military support for Israel, you are not pro-Israel enough. Yeah, the first race that AIPAC really got involved in in this cycle was the Democratic primary for a House seat in New Jersey. And they targeted a representative there named Tom Malinowski. And Tom Malinowski is like by no means a squad member. He is by no means a progressive. He also is a believer in defending America's commitment to defend Israel's security. In fact, he had angered some people by refusing to call Israel's war in Gaza genocide. He would not use the G-word. But, he also has been very critical of Israel's response to October 7th. And he thinks that the US should be making kind of case-by-case decisions on military aid to Israel. He wants to place conditions. He wants to consider every allocation that the United States makes to Israel's military. So, AIPAC super PAC spent over $2 million over $2.3 million to defeat him. And they did so by running ads that were not explicitly about Israel, but by attacking Malinowski on other issues that they've thought would be disqualifying in the eyes of Democratic primary voters. This is the first time they've gone after someone who has mainstream views on Israel. And the ad itself is a despicable and unforgivable lie. But, in this instance, AIPAC's efforts completely backfired. They did succeed in defeating Malinowski, but their candidate, the candidate they were backing, also lost. And instead, the nominee was a progressive candidate who was way to Malinowski's left on Israel... Well, in many ways, you can see someone like Tom Malinowski as a bigger threat to AIPAC than a member of the squad because he's a moderate Democrat who is still, yes, supportive of Israel, but is starting to very openly question America's unconditional support for Israel.

There was a kind of a growing recognition that it was good politics to publicly distance yourself from AIPAC and even potentially tar your opponent as being supported by AIPAC. Yeah, I mean, we're seeing there in Michigan a race where AIPAC is spending more money than they have ever spent before in a single race, something approaching $30 million, which they have spent supporting Haley Stevens, who is a moderate, blue-collar, pro-manufacturing Democrat, kind of old-school Michigan Democrat, who is running against Abdul El-Sayed, who is the son of Egyptian immigrants, far to the left, very opposed to US aid to Israel, very vocal about what he describes as a genocide in Gaza, has really turned Israel into a kind of a central plank of his campaign there. And has also seized not just on the Israel side of this, but the kind of corrupting influence of money and dark money in American politics, and sort of turning AIPAC into a symbol of the kind of corrupting influence of money in politics. Yeah, no, she's taken a different approach toward AIPAC and really even toward Israel. I mean, she has criticized Netanyahu in the past, but she has embraced AIPAC. She considers herself and speaks of herself as a proud supporter of Israel, though she's not Jewish. This organization that started as a bipartisan organization to support US-Israel relations, it has now become one of the causes for that relationship deteriorating. And so, I wonder, where do you think that leaves AIPAC? So, AIPAC is really at a crossroads right now. What it could do, and you know, what it might do, is begin to recognize that there isn't necessarily a single litmus test for being pro-Israel. There should be room in the kind of pro-Israel tent for politicians on both sides of the aisle, Republicans and Democrats, who are willing to criticize Israel, have real questions about this Israeli government, about the actions of the Israeli government, and want to scrutinize the military and financial support we give the state of Israel, but still support Israel... And the reality is that the way things are moving right now in American politics, if they want to remain relevant, AIPAC may not really have a choice because this same shift that we've been talking about on the left is also happening, albeit a lot more slowly and with very different dynamics on the right. It is not hard to imagine that in the future there could be a race with two candidates who are both critics of Israel, and AIPAC is going to have to, if it wants to remain relevant, is going to have to reconsider what it means to be pro-Israel.