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WASHINGTON (JTA) — A political motion committee affiliated with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee is spending upwards of $1 million in a second bid to oppose Summer season Lee, a Pittsburgh-area progressive who as soon as likened Israel to white individuals who shoot Blacks.
The transfer by United Democracy Venture so near the election subsequent week drew fury from progressive Democrats, together with Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Jewish Vermonter and progressive standard-bearer who has clashed with AIPAC in recent times.
“The billionaires who fund AIPAC are spending $1 million in opposition to @SummerForPA as a result of she stands with working folks and in opposition to company greed,” Sanders mentioned Tuesday on Twitter. “Democrats should unite and condemn this Tremendous PAC, and do the whole lot attainable to elect Summer season.” Additionally attacking AIPAC was Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, the outstanding New York progressive within the Home.
AIPAC replied: “We oppose Summer season Lee due to her harmful views of the US-Israel alliance. AIPAC and our 2 million grassroots members proudly help progressive candidates — together with 148 Democrats this cycle — who don’t verify their values on the door in the case of standing with Israel.”
United Democracy Venture is spending near $1 million on TV adverts and one other $80,000 on fliers depicting Lee, a state consultant, as a “radical” who seeks to defund the police. Neither the flier nor the TV advert mentions Israel or UDP’s AIPAC affiliation.
UDP already spent greater than $2 million in an unsuccessful effort to maintain Lee from successful the first in Might.
It’s not clear why UDP believes Lee, who’s in a strongly Democratic district, the twelfth, is susceptible. Mike Doyle, the Republican operating, has the identical title because the Democrat who’s retiring, and there was reporting that Doyle the Republican hopes sufficient voters will confuse him with Doyle the Democrat to make the distinction.
That is UDP’s solely foray right into a race that pits a Democrat in opposition to a Republican. Till now, the tremendous PAC — so designated as a result of it will possibly spend limitless funds so long as it doesn’t coordinate with a marketing campaign — has sought to again Democrats it deems as pro-Israel in opposition to these it sees as hostile. Earlier than the Lee dump this week, UDP spent $14 million defending Democrats it has endorsed and $10 million attacking Democrats it opposes.
Lee’s marketing campaign has barely targeted on Israel; her marketing campaign web page doesn’t record any overseas coverage positions. In 2021, nonetheless, she posted a tweet likening Israel’s claims of self-defense in its dealings with Palestinians to how police defend themselves in encounters that have killed Black people.
“Once I hear American pols use the chorus ‘Israel has the proper to defend itself’ in response to simple atrocities on a marginalized pop[ulation], I can’t assist however consider how the west has at all times justified indiscriminate and disproportionate power and energy on weakened and marginalized [people],” she mentioned then. She in contrast Israel to George Zimmerman, the Florida safety guard who in 2012 shot and killed Trayvon Martin, a Black teenager throughout a scuffle.
She has since instructed Pittsburgh’s Jewish group that she would defend Israel’s standing as a Jewish state and that her comparability was not out of line.
AIPAC can also be below fireplace from progressives for the endorsements from one other PAC it’s affiliated with. The AIPAC PAC has backed over 100 Republicans who refused to certify President Joe Biden’s election on Jan. 6, 2021, after a lethal assault on the Capitol by a mob spurred by former President Donald Trump’s false claims that he had received the election. AIPAC notes that the identical PAC additionally endorses progressives and that its sole standards is help for the U.S.-Israel relationship.
J Road, the liberal Jewish Center East foyer which has endorsed Lee, contrasted AIPAC’s assaults on Lee with its continued endorsement of Rep. Clay Higgins, a Louisiana Republican, who posted after which eliminated a tweet mocking Paul Pelosi, the husband of Home Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who was hospitalized over the weekend after an assault by an assailant who allegedly embraced far-right, pro-Trump and antisemitic conspiracy theories. Higgins repeated a false anti-gay conspiracy concept within the tweet.
“AIPAC’s actions clarify that they actually imply it after they say that nothing issues to them aside from unquestioning help for Israel,” mentioned Laura Birnbaum, J Road’s nationwide political director. “Not the survival of American democracy, nor the core values and issues of nearly all of Jewish People.”
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