ON Wednesday, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) made an unusual announcement. The organisation would no longer endorse or make direct contributions to candidates running in US elections. This marks the end of a practice that AIPAC began in 2021 (its lobbying started in the ‘50s).
This does not mean that the Israel lobby will stop trying to influence US elections. AIPAC will continue mobilising individual donors. However, the announcement is an acknowledgement of the growing difficulties associated with overt affiliation with the lobby and the pro-Israel agenda.
The genocide in Gaza and the war in Iran have created a situation where many Americans are questioning their country’s support for Israel and the resources devoted to it. Democratic candidates have challenged US involvement in the Middle East and the $3.8 billion in annual assistance Washington provides Israel.
No campaign has illustrated this with greater clarity than that of Dr Abdul El-Sayed, who is running for the US Senate seat in Michigan. In the Democratic primary, AIPAC spent $30 million backing El-Sayed’s opponent, Haley Stevens. Other political action committees also spent heavily on her campaign. In contrast, El-Sayed spent only $3.2m, most of it raised from individual donors.
Despite all this, El-Sayed won. One reason was his willingness to confront Stevens over AIPAC’s involvement in the race and to question why US taxpayer money should go to another country. What El-Sayed was able to do is connect two different realities of the American political context. First, he tapped into the American fatigue with interminable wars in the Middle East. Again, and again, he argued that the US had “no business” becoming embroiled in further conflicts, while infrastructure and institutions at home were decaying.
His criticism of Donald Trump’s escapades in Iran became part of this argument. Second, El-Sayed connected the affordability crisis facing Americans to questions about government spending and the country’s relationship with Israel. Americans struggling to afford healthcare and basic groceries are naturally questioning how public money is spent abroad.
War-weary Americans can see through Israeli machinations.
El-Sayed is not campaigning on Israel alone. Affordability and healthcare are central issues for him, and he supports a government-funded Medicare For All option that would make healthcare accessible to millions of people.
His own background in public health makes him a persuasive speaker on these issues. AIPAC’s affiliated Super PAC has now directed spending against El-Sayed in his contest with Republican Mike Rogers. This is a departure from AIPAC’s usual support for Democratic candidates in Michigan.
American Zionists and the well-heeled donors behind AIPAC may see the Michigan contest not simply as an electoral battle in a US state but also as an indicator of how anti-Israel sentiment is becoming increasingly pervasive among the Democratic electorate. The announcement that there will be no more overt endorsements reflects the liability that public association with AIPAC can create for some candidates. It is a sea change in the character of Democratic politics in the US.
There are global implications in this shift. If El-Sayed wins — and one hopes he does despite the millions that AIPAC is now pouring into his opponent’s coffers — it will mean that other Democratic lawmakers in the House and Senate will have to think twice about voting to send billions of dollars to Israel. In the past, Democratic politicians have voted en masse for just these sorts of measures.
Israel is very proud of its genocidal actions in Gaza. It is also quite smug about having persuaded Trump to attack Iran. It sees both of these actions and its continuing excesses in Gaza and the West Bank as victories. This, however, is an illusion. The reality is that in the process of achieving the former, Israelis forgot that ordinary, war-weary Americans can see through its machinations. This is important not because Israel cares what Americans think but because Israel is entirely dependent on the US, receiving almost 70 per cent of its military equipment from them.
As the election of Zohran Mamdani in New York City and the hopeful rise of Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan show, Americans are signalling just how fed up they are with Israel’s intrusions in their own government and its attempts to create dual loyalties in their political leadership.
As American leaders stop signing blank cheques for Israel as in the past five decades, Israel is likely to face enormous struggles. Already an isolated nation, increasingly detested by the world for the carnage of innocents, its future is not that of a victorious nation but of a widely reviled one.
The writer is an attorney teaching constitutional law and political philosophy.
Published in Dawn, October 24th, 2026