Is AIPAC Doomed?
Confidence requires clarity.
Log In
Email *
Password *
Remember Me
Forgot Your Password?
Log In
New to The Nation? Subscribe
Print subscriber? Activate your online access
Skip to content Skip to footer
Is AIPAC Doomed?
Magazine
Newsletters
Subscribe
Log In
Search
Subscribe
Donate
Magazine
Latest
Archive
Podcasts
Newsletters
Sections
Politics
World
Economy
Culture
Books & the Arts
The Nation
About
Events
Contact Us
Advertise
Current Issue
Morbid Symptoms
/ March 12, 2026
Is AIPAC Doomed?
The hard-line pro-Israel lobby is facing more opposition than ever before. But fully defanging it won’t be easy.
Jeet Heer
Share
Copy Link
Facebook
X (Twitter)
Bluesky Pocket
Email
Ad Policy
Anti-AIPAC protesters in Farmington Hills, Michigan, on November 10, 2025.(Jim West / UCG / Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
This article appears in the
April 2026 issue, with the headline “Is AIPAC Doomed?”
One thing that AIPAC and its critics have usually agreed on is that the hard-line Zionist lobby group is fearsomely powerful, a kingmaker that can boost or destroy political careers. In the wake of the 2022 midterms, AIPAC crowed: “More than 95% of AIPAC-backed candidates won their election last night! Being pro-Israel is good policy and good politics!”
This chest-thumping is designed to scare off critics. In an influential 2006 essay, the political scientists John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt noted that “AIPAC prizes its reputation as a formidable adversary, of course, because it discourages anyone from questioning its agenda.” But the scholars also gave credence to the idea of a nearly unbeatable pro-Israel lobby, claiming that AIPAC has “a stranglehold on the U.S. Congress.”
Mearsheimer and Walt might have had a point in 2006, but in 2026, AIPAC increasingly looks like a paper tiger—one that, despite its still-considerable reach, is regarded with growing skepticism and even disgust by voters.
The diminishment of AIPAC’s power has been a long time in the making, with the Gaza genocide accelerating a longer trend against AIPAC’s ultra-hawkish pro-Israel politics. According to Politico, a Quinnipiac poll in August 2025 found that “half of the voters surveyed, including 77 percent of Democrats, said they believe Israel is committing genocide.” In addition, “60 percent of voters disapprove of the U.S. sending military aid to Israel.”
And as Branko Marcetic noted in Jacobin, AIPAC’s claim of a 95 percent victory rate is disingenuous, given that it mostly endorses candidates who are overwhelming favorites to win and “meekly back[s] out of races where they’re likely to lose, to avoid putting a blemish on their record.” While AIPAC did win significant victories against progressives such as Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush in 2024, it was aided by extraneous factors (such as the redistricting that gave Bowman a less-friendly district).
More recently, AIPAC and the broader pro-Israel lobby have suffered some stinging defeats. For instance, Bill Ackman, Michael Bloomberg, and other billionaires—many of whom are hard-line Zionists—donated more than $40 million to the efforts to tank Zohran Mamdani’s New York City mayoral campaign.
Current Issue …
Confidence requires clarity.
Log In
Email *
Password *
Remember Me
Forgot Your Password?
Log In
New to The Nation? Subscribe
Print subscriber? Activate your online access
Skip to content Skip to footer
Is AIPAC Doomed?
Magazine
Newsletters
Subscribe
Log In
Search
Subscribe
Donate
Magazine
Latest
Archive
Podcasts
Newsletters
Sections
Politics
World
Economy
Culture
Books & the Arts
The Nation
About
Events
Contact Us
Advertise
Current Issue
Morbid Symptoms
/ March 12, 2026
Is AIPAC Doomed?
The hard-line pro-Israel lobby is facing more opposition than ever before. But fully defanging it won’t be easy.
Jeet Heer
Share
Copy Link
X (Twitter)
Bluesky Pocket
Ad Policy
Anti-AIPAC protesters in Farmington Hills, Michigan, on November 10, 2025.(Jim West / UCG / Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
This article appears in the
April 2026 issue, with the headline “Is AIPAC Doomed?”
One thing that AIPAC and its critics have usually agreed on is that the hard-line Zionist lobby group is fearsomely powerful, a kingmaker that can boost or destroy political careers. In the wake of the 2022 midterms, AIPAC crowed: “More than 95% of AIPAC-backed candidates won their election last night! Being pro-Israel is good policy and good politics!”
This chest-thumping is designed to scare off critics. In an influential 2006 essay, the political scientists John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt noted that “AIPAC prizes its reputation as a formidable adversary, of course, because it discourages anyone from questioning its agenda.” But the scholars also gave credence to the idea of a nearly unbeatable pro-Israel lobby, claiming that AIPAC has “a stranglehold on the U.S. Congress.”
Mearsheimer and Walt might have had a point in 2006, but in 2026, AIPAC increasingly looks like a paper tiger—one that, despite its still-considerable reach, is regarded with growing skepticism and even disgust by voters.
The diminishment of AIPAC’s power has been a long time in the making, with the Gaza genocide accelerating a longer trend against AIPAC’s ultra-hawkish pro-Israel politics. According to Politico, a Quinnipiac poll in August 2025 found that “half of the voters surveyed, including 77 percent of Democrats, said they believe Israel is committing genocide.” In addition, “60 percent of voters disapprove of the U.S. sending military aid to Israel.”
And as Branko Marcetic noted in Jacobin, AIPAC’s claim of a 95 percent victory rate is disingenuous, given that it mostly endorses candidates who are overwhelming favorites to win and “meekly back[s] out of races where they’re likely to lose, to avoid putting a blemish on their record.” While AIPAC did win significant victories against progressives such as Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush in 2024, it was aided by extraneous factors (such as the redistricting that gave Bowman a less-friendly district).
More recently, AIPAC and the broader pro-Israel lobby have suffered some stinging defeats. For instance, Bill Ackman, Michael Bloomberg, and other billionaires—many of whom are hard-line Zionists—donated more than $40 million to the efforts to tank Zohran Mamdani’s New York City mayoral campaign.
Current Issue …
Is AIPAC Doomed?
Confidence requires clarity.
Log In
Email *
Password *
Remember Me
Forgot Your Password?
Log In
New to The Nation? Subscribe
Print subscriber? Activate your online access
Skip to content Skip to footer
Is AIPAC Doomed?
Magazine
Newsletters
Subscribe
Log In
Search
Subscribe
Donate
Magazine
Latest
Archive
Podcasts
Newsletters
Sections
Politics
World
Economy
Culture
Books & the Arts
The Nation
About
Events
Contact Us
Advertise
Current Issue
Morbid Symptoms
/ March 12, 2026
Is AIPAC Doomed?
The hard-line pro-Israel lobby is facing more opposition than ever before. But fully defanging it won’t be easy.
Jeet Heer
Share
Copy Link
Facebook
X (Twitter)
Bluesky Pocket
Email
Ad Policy
Anti-AIPAC protesters in Farmington Hills, Michigan, on November 10, 2025.(Jim West / UCG / Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
This article appears in the
April 2026 issue, with the headline “Is AIPAC Doomed?”
One thing that AIPAC and its critics have usually agreed on is that the hard-line Zionist lobby group is fearsomely powerful, a kingmaker that can boost or destroy political careers. In the wake of the 2022 midterms, AIPAC crowed: “More than 95% of AIPAC-backed candidates won their election last night! Being pro-Israel is good policy and good politics!”
This chest-thumping is designed to scare off critics. In an influential 2006 essay, the political scientists John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt noted that “AIPAC prizes its reputation as a formidable adversary, of course, because it discourages anyone from questioning its agenda.” But the scholars also gave credence to the idea of a nearly unbeatable pro-Israel lobby, claiming that AIPAC has “a stranglehold on the U.S. Congress.”
Mearsheimer and Walt might have had a point in 2006, but in 2026, AIPAC increasingly looks like a paper tiger—one that, despite its still-considerable reach, is regarded with growing skepticism and even disgust by voters.
The diminishment of AIPAC’s power has been a long time in the making, with the Gaza genocide accelerating a longer trend against AIPAC’s ultra-hawkish pro-Israel politics. According to Politico, a Quinnipiac poll in August 2025 found that “half of the voters surveyed, including 77 percent of Democrats, said they believe Israel is committing genocide.” In addition, “60 percent of voters disapprove of the U.S. sending military aid to Israel.”
And as Branko Marcetic noted in Jacobin, AIPAC’s claim of a 95 percent victory rate is disingenuous, given that it mostly endorses candidates who are overwhelming favorites to win and “meekly back[s] out of races where they’re likely to lose, to avoid putting a blemish on their record.” While AIPAC did win significant victories against progressives such as Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush in 2024, it was aided by extraneous factors (such as the redistricting that gave Bowman a less-friendly district).
More recently, AIPAC and the broader pro-Israel lobby have suffered some stinging defeats. For instance, Bill Ackman, Michael Bloomberg, and other billionaires—many of whom are hard-line Zionists—donated more than $40 million to the efforts to tank Zohran Mamdani’s New York City mayoral campaign.
Current Issue …
0 Comments
0 Shares
44 Views
0 Reviews
