The Myth of AIPAC’s Power

By Daniel J. Samet

Thursday, December 18, 2025

 

One acronym looms large in the minds of Israel-haters nationwide. AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, is a particular target of their odium.

 

AIPAC-bashing knows no ideological bounds. “AIPAC is the most successful foreign influence operation in U.S. history,” wrote former Democratic National Committee Vice Chairman David Hogg. “NO Democrat should accept money from AIPAC — an organization that also helped deliver the presidency to Donald Trump,” Bernie Sanders fumed. Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene derided the organization as “Israel First.” The anti-Zionist left and isolationist right agree that AIPAC is a malignant force in American politics.

 

Anti-AIPAC mania is no longer confined to the political fringes. In October, Congressman Seth Moulton, long known as a moderate Democrat, announced that he was returning AIPAC donations and abjuring ties with it. “AIPAC has aligned itself too closely with Prime Minister Netanyahu’s government,” Moulton said in a statement explaining his decision. It was no doubt driven by his foray into the Senate race in Massachusetts, a state where being pro-Israel is increasingly disqualifying for political office. It was also driven by the perception that AIPAC is a powerful force in American politics.

 

Never mind that AIPAC is a group of American Jews and non-Jews who are petitioning their government — a wholly legitimate act protected by the First Amendment. Is AIPAC as powerful as its critics allege? Do they have a point about its influence?

 

The evidence leads to a different conclusion. The truth is that AIPAC has largely failed to deliver an American foreign policy that is more favorable toward Israel. “If you go back 10, 12, 15 years ago at the most, the strongest lobby in Washington was the Jewish lobby — it was Israel,” President Trump recently said. “That’s no longer true.” He’s partly right. AIPAC’s lobbying has never been the decisive factor in strengthening U.S.-Israel relations.

 

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At its birth in 1954, AIPAC was a small shop with big aims. The advocacy group sought to reorient U.S. policy in a pro-Israel direction, urging stronger ties between the two countries. It favored substantial American economic and military assistance to Israel and wanted Washington to abandon its quixotic courting of radical Arab states such as Egypt. Yet its reach was limited. The White House embraced Israel as a partner after its victory in the 1967 Six-Day War because of strategic exigencies, not AIPAC.

 

By the 1970s, in a more pro-Israel Washington, AIPAC had grown to be a more serious operation. Yet its increasing profile wasn’t always accompanied by policy successes. It had particular trouble with the Jimmy Carter administration. Carter’s vision for the Middle East was very different from the one AIPAC advocated. Wanting to put distance between America and Israel, he believed that only a supposedly evenhanded approach would deliver a lasting Arab-Israeli settlement that could advance American security and prosperity. AIPAC thought that Carter had it backward: robust U.S. support for Israel would drive the Arabs to cut a deal. AIPAC believed that Carter’s way would prolong the impasse and further endanger Israel.

 

Carter angered AIPAC shortly after taking office when he prevented Israel from selling Kfir airplanes, outfitted with U.S. engines, to Ecuador. The missed business opportunity was damaging to Israel, which had few prospective arms clients overseas. AIPAC saw no grounds for the administration’s decision and lobbied vigorously for it to change course. It had no luck, and the administration was indignant that AIPAC and other pro-Israel organizations were crying foul. Carter never allowed Israel’s Kfirs to go to Ecuador.

 

The planes were far from the only point of contention between AIPAC and Carter. Toward the end of 1977, the administration announced that it would co-chair, with the Soviet Union, a Geneva conference on Middle East peace. Israel vehemently objected. So did AIPAC, which accused the administration of “devaluing commitments to Israel.” As relations between Carter and AIPAC spiraled, it became clear that, far from dictating American actions in the Middle East, AIPAC was losing any influence it may have had — or hoped to have — over foreign policy.

 

Tensions reached a crisis point the following year, when AIPAC waged its first major political battle. As an inducement to Arab-Israeli peace, Carter proposed selling aircraft to Israel, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. AIPAC could not countenance the transfer of advanced warplanes to those Arab countries, both of which were still in a state of war with Israel. It fought the administration tooth and nail. AIPAC staffers urged lawmakers, who had the power to kill the deal, to vote against it. AIPAC’s goal was straightforward: bring down the package. Its efforts were in vain. When it came time to vote, the Senate supported the administration’s position 54–44.

 

AIPAC also butted heads with Ronald Reagan, who was warmer to Israel than Carter had been. In 1981, another arms package prompted AIPAC to take on the White House. The weapon in question was the Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS), an aerial reconnaissance system to be purchased by Saudi Arabia. Tom Dine, who had recently taken the reins as executive director at AIPAC, led the charge.

 

AIPAC’s aggressive campaign against the AWACS sale rankled Reagan, who wrote in his diary that he was “disturbed by the reaction & the opposition of so many groups in the Jewish community.” In the president’s view, AWACS posed no threat to Israel because it was a defensive asset for the Saudis with few offensive capabilities. AIPAC manned the phones, wrote letters, and met with congressional staff, educating all comers about the alleged risks of the sale.

 

AIPAC helped consolidate the anti-AWACS contingent in the House of Representatives, which voted to axe the deal. It then fell to the Senate. Fearful that the pro-Israel lobby would prevail, the president and his team used their political capital to peel votes away from the anti-AWACS camp. Reagan himself implored key senators to support the deal. The Senate supported the president’s position by a 52–48 margin.

 

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Several other setbacks further disprove the notion of AIPAC’s power. During George W. Bush’s presidency, two AIPAC staffers were embroiled in what the media labeled an espionage scandal. They were indicted on allegations that they had received intelligence from a Department of Defense official and relayed that classified information to the Israeli government. Both denied wrongdoing and claimed that they were doing what members of AIPAC had always done: talk to Israeli officials in a wholly legal and appropriate manner. Even so, AIPAC fired both staffers, reportedly under pressure from the Pentagon. (In the end, the case was dropped, even after the government had pursued it with Javert-like zeal.) Is this the tale of an organization that runs Washington?

 

AIPAC’s campaign against the Iran nuclear deal was perhaps the most definitive proof of the limits of its influence. Like most pro-Israel Americans, AIPAC watched with unease as officials in Barack Obama’s administration negotiated with Iranian intermediaries over Tehran’s nuclear program. Under the terms of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the U.S. forked over billions of dollars in sanctions relief to the leading state sponsor of terrorism in exchange for temporary restrictions on its nuclear program. The Obama administration, aware that the Republican-held Senate would never green-light the JCPOA as a treaty, presented it instead as a political agreement that would bypass congressional approval. “The choice we face is ultimately between diplomacy or some form of war,” Obama said in (dubious) defense of the JCPOA.

 

Once again, AIPAC took on the White House. Howard Kohr, AIPAC’s executive director, exhorted his fellow Americans to help axe the agreement. “Call Senator [Barbara] Mikulski and call Senator [Ben] Cardin and urge them to oppose the deal,” Kohr told congregants of a Maryland synagogue in one example of his advocacy. “We need a better deal.” AIPAC’s goal was for the House and Senate to pass, by veto-proof majorities, a resolution of disapproval of the JCPOA. Yet the group could not persuade enough Democratic lawmakers to contravene Obama’s position. And while Congress passed a limp resolution, the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act, it never passed a resolution of disapproval, thereby ensuring that the JCPOA would go forward.

 

That’s not to say that AIPAC can’t claim any successes in its lobbying efforts, though often its priorities simply aligned with Congress’s. Since the 1970s, Congress has approved significant economic aid to Israel, and in more recent years, AIPAC has urged Washington to supply Israel with billions of dollars in military assistance. AIPAC has also helped negotiate carve outs to arms sales to Israel’s enemies. And once upon a time, it was instrumental in highlighting Palestinian terrorism and setting U.S. conditions for dialogue with Palestinian leadership. But in many cases, particularly in recent years, policymakers concluded independently of AIPAC that Israel’s security was a major American interest.

 

In truth, AIPAC has done a good job of conveying the impression of immense power when the reality is different. This is understandable: any interest group worth its salt needs to cultivate an image of strength. Consider AIPAC’s (formerly) annual policy conference. A meager 45 people showed up at its first iteration in 1960. Over the decades, as AIPAC became a much more visible presence in Washington, the yearly affair drew thousands, and then tens of thousands, of attendees, including presidents and other politicians. They would come to sing hosannas about the U.S.-Israel relationship, which then commanded bipartisan support. The conference became a hallmark of AIPAC’s brand. Yet the gathering itself had negligible impact on policy. Beneath the pomp and circumstance, the event was little more than a dog and pony show for funders and members nationwide. AIPAC’s 2020 conference, which coincided with the advent of the Covid-19 pandemic, was its last.

 

Still, AIPAC’s failures haven’t stopped anti-Zionists and opponents of U.S. Middle East policy from railing against the group. They level various charges against it, including that it is a foreign agent and that it dupes unwitting politicians into supporting policies deleterious to America. The anti-AIPAC camp received a big boost in 2007, when John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt’s The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy hit the shelves. Their book had all the markings of respectability. It was well researched, footnoted, and published by a leading imprint. Its two authors were political scientists held in high regard by other scholars.

 

Yet its findings veered beyond hostility to Israel and Zionism and toward antisemitism. Mearsheimer and Walt accused the pro-Israel lobby, including AIPAC, of wielding undue influence over American politicians and policymaking. “Until the lobby begins to favor a different approach,” they wrote, “or until its influence is weakened, American policy in the region will continue to be hamstrung, to the detriment of all concerned.” AIPAC was their bogeyman — the target of their grievances with U.S. foreign policy. Mearsheimer and Walt mistook AIPAC’s image of power for actual power.

 

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Over the past two decades, and particularly since 2023, Israel has turned into a partisan issue. Democrats are now overwhelmingly hostile to the Jewish state. That AIPAC could do nothing to prevent the defection of one of America’s two major political parties is as good an indication as any of its weakness.

 

Although the letters “PAC” appear in its name, AIPAC was never a political action committee, and it never directly contributed money to political campaigns. It styled itself as a bipartisan group that would work with all officeholders regardless of party affiliation. That changed in 2021, when, in response to the Democratic Party’s anti-Israel groundswell, it embraced transactional partisan politics, setting up its first political action committee to back pro-Israel candidates. AIPAC has since given money to Democratic contenders in several high-profile primaries, including George Latimer, who unseated New York Representative Jamaal Bowman, and Wesley Bell, who won the seat of Missouri Representative Cori Bush.

 

It’s no secret why AIPAC is often pilloried. People have decried the supposedly nefarious role of Jews in politics since at least the time of court Jews in medieval Europe. Today, elements on both left and right are disproportionately focused on the Jewish state and suspicious of the political motives of Israel’s supporters. To Israel’s detractors, there is something wrong when American Jews exercise their constitutional rights, even when those Jews are joined by vastly larger numbers of Christians in their support for the U.S.-Israel partnership. It’s hard not to see AIPAC-haters as standard-issue Jew-haters who are prey to conspiracies about dual loyalties and mysterious cabals.

 

The reality is that AIPAC’s critics attack an organization whose power has been greatly overstated. Its serial failures undermine tropes of powerful, scheming Jews directing the affairs of state and reveal a truth far less seductive to conspiracists. Israel’s American supporters, whether Jewish or not, often fail to get their way, including in politics.