FROM RABBI ANDRUE KAHN, of NYC, Executive Director for the American Council for Judaism:

"I’m noticing that many people upset about the way AIPAC is being framed, and particularly about the way Mayor Mamdani described it, don’t seem to know the facts about AIPACs tactics over the past couple election cycles.

At last public count, this cycle AIPAC's super PAC has spent more than $38 million, on track to pass the $46 million it spent in 2024.

The dark money, a term of art for the tactic AIPAC is using, can only be fully counted after the elections are over.

Because AIPAC's own name has become toxic in Democratic primaries, so they run money through United Democracy Project, AIPAC's super PAC, which seeds pop-up groups with unrelated names like Elect Chicago Women.

FEC rules mean the donors are not revealed (hence, dark) until after the vote. In Illinois primaries, AIPAC's super PAC seeded two anonymous groups that spent more than $14 million, with the funders confirmed only after voters went to the polls.

In those same races it ran $22 million in ads that never mentioned Israel, routed through shell PACs built to hide who was paying.

The voters see a flood of well-funded local attack ads without attribution to their primary source; that is what dark money means, because they are obfuscating where the funding is coming from.

Why focus on AIPAC in particular?

Because AIPAC's PAC reported $12.75 million to candidates this cycle, more than three times the next-largest PAC of any kind in the country. It is the single biggest donor PAC in the entire cycle, and its super PAC concentrates that money in a few competitive Democratic primaries rather than scattering it. In 2024 its spending to unseat Jamaal Bowman eclipsed what any group had ever spent on one House race.

And I think in the context I’m speaking into, an important fact unrelated to their money is that AIPAC does not present itself as a Jewish organization.

It is a bipartisan pro-Israel lobby, with nearly half its donors to Democrats also giving to Republicans.

Its single issue is American support for the Israeli government.

There is nothing particularly Jewish about that.

When someone says going after AIPAC is the same as going after Jews, they are the ones treating loyalty to a foreign government as a measure of Jewishness; a conflation that is, indeed, antisemitic.

If you think I’m overstating it, or misunderstanding, I invite you to read the sources that will be in my first comment on this post."

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