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Democratic Party leaders had a chance this week to push back against Israel’s violent expansionism and the Israel lobby’s massive political spending in the United States.
Once again, Democrats chose instead to punt the issue despite plummeting public support for Israel, both among their base and the wider U.S. public, ahead of the midterms.
At a meeting in New Orleans on April 9, members of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) voted down a symbolic resolution to limit the “growing influence” of dark money and corporate outside spending on Democratic races, particularly the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which recently pumped tens of millions of dollars into Democratic primaries in New Jersey and Illinois.
A draft of the resolution stated that “massive outside spending” by groups on candidates based on “positions regarding international conflicts or foreign governments” raises concerns about undue influence on debate and policy making, potentially “constraining elected officials’ ability to represent the views of their constituents.” The resolution specifically called out AIPAC by name.
The DNC Resolutions Committee also tabled a pair of resolutions to recognize a Palestinian state and support restrictions on aid to units in the Israeli military accused of war crimes. Those resolutions were referred to the party’s nascent Middle East Working Group, which was created last year as it became increasingly clear that public opposition to Israel’s genocide in Gaza cost Democrats votes in the 2024 elections.
DNC members also sent to the working group a resolution calling for an end to the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran and pointing to potential war crimes in the suspected U.S. strike on a girls’ school in Minab that killed at least 175 people, most of them children, on February 28.
The Middle East Working Group, which includes members with diverging views on Israel, held its fourth meeting this week but has been slow to agree on an agenda. Hamid Bendaas, communications director at the Institute for Middle East Understanding (IMEU) Policy Project, said the group does not appear on track to accomplish much before voters go to the polls in November.
“The Democratic Party seems asleep at the wheel and is not responding to this very quick and very influential public opinion shift on Israel.”
“The Democratic Party seems asleep at the wheel and is not responding to this very quick and very influential public opinion shift on Israel,” Bendaas told Truthout in an interview.
However, some Democrats know that the party cannot forever avoid either U.S. financial and military support for Israel’s expansionist conquests or the influence of AIPAC. One DNC member speaking on the condition of anonymity said they had received direct calls about the resolutions from “two presidential aspirants who would have to answer for the DNC’s positions on Israel and AIPAC if they run,” according to Politico.
Meanwhile, Israel’s violent apartheid and ethnic cleansing, perpetrated with U.S. weapons and funding, continues unabated, according to the American Friends Service Committee’s Just Peace Global Policy Director Mike Merryman-Lotze.
“The failure of the DNC to take even minimal action in the face of ethnic cleansing and genocide is shameful,” Merryman-Lotze said.
Merryman-Lotze said the DNC’s tabling of the resolutions on a Palestinian state and military support to Israel came as the Israeli government announced 34 new settlements in the occupied West Bank, where extremist settlers are violently forcing Palestinians from their homes with support from the Israeli government and military. The DNC resolutions reaffirm that such settlements are illegal under international law.
“The approval of these new settlements follows a year of extreme violence by the Israeli military and settlers in the West Bank that has killed hundreds of Palestinians and displaced tens of thousands from their homes,” Merryman-Lotze said in an email. “Despite the six-month-old ceasefire, Israel has bombed Gaza on 36 of the last 40 days, killing at least 107 people.”
In a memo urging DNC members to adopt the resolutions on Palestine and AIPAC, IMEU pointed to polls showing the vast majority of Democrats (77 percent in August 2025) agree with leading human rights groups that Israel is committing the crime of genocide in Gaza. Support for providing U.S. military aid to Israel has plummeted across the political spectrum, including among Republicans and especially younger voters.
New polling found notably strong support for Palestinian rights in Texas, a historically red state. According to a poll released on April 6 by the IMEU Policy Project and conducted by Data for Progress, 76 percent of voters in the March 3 Texas Democratic Senate primary agree that Israel is committing genocide, and 80 percent support ending weapons funding to Israel.
Nationwide, a Pew Research survey released on April 7 found that 80 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents hold unfavorable views of Israel, compared to 69 percent in 2024 and 53 percent in 2022.
Bendaas said IMEU consulted with Democrats on the party’s own autopsy of the 2024 elections. That autopsy concluded that Kamala Harris lost significant support in the presidential race due to the Biden administration’s policy of providing seemingly limitless funding for Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
“We are just not seeing any movement from the Democratic Party leadership to adjust from this reality,” Bendaas said. “There’s no urgency to react to what will clearly be an issue for many of their own voters in the November midterms.”
DNC Chair Ken Martin touted a resolution passed on April 9 that condemns the “corrosive influence” of dark money on Democratic primaries but does not single out AIPAC or any other specific interest group.
“We had various resolutions that focused on different industries and groups, and instead of going one-by-one, we passed a blanket repudiation,” Martin said on social media, adding that he supports an end to dark money in politics.
Brian Romick, president and CEO of Democratic Majority for Israel, applauded the DNC for rejecting a “set of divisive, anti-Israel resolutions.”
“These measures would be a gift to Republicans, would further fracture our party, and do nothing to bring Israelis and Palestinians closer to peace,” Romick said in a statement that did not mention AIPAC by name.
However, Bendaas said that Democrats face intense pressure from powerful lobbyists at AIPAC to take positions that do not align with their own voters. AIPAC is funded by Republican billionaire mega-donors such as Miriam Adelson and Paul Singer, and in 2024 the group was the largest source of GOP donations funneled into in Democratic elections. AIPAC’s $100 million in campaign spending in 2024 exceeded the spending of any organization in a single cycle in U.S. history.
“They are invested in defeating Democrats, and they are also flooding money into Democratic elections to support people who do not have voter support otherwise,” Bendaas said. “And this is an existential risk for Democratic Party if you are being propped up by the opposition.”
Bendaas said there appears to be an intentional strategy among AIPAC and its mega-donors to weaken and hollow out the Democratic Party as its voter base increasingly turns against Israel.
“Democrats chose genocide over winning in 2024,” Bendaas said. “When does this stop?”
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