There’s an oddity in the Democratic Party over Israel. The party’s rank-and-file voters have shifted strongly toward supporting Palestinian human rights, but the party’s leadership has remained stuck in the anachronistic AIPAC politics of unconditional support for Israel.
A Pew poll from March 2025, for instance, found that 69% of Democratic voters have an unfavorable opinion of Israel. Moreover, “now a strong majority of Democrats (59%) say they are more sympathetic to the Palestinians, versus just 21% who answered with the Israelis.”
A subsequent October poll found that “Only 18% of Democrats view the Israeli government favorably.” Additionally, an August Quinnipiac poll has found that 77% of Democrats believe Israel is committing genocide in Gaza (and only 11% disagree).
An October poll conducted by YouGov found that a supermajority of Democrats Support Same Sanctions Against Israel That Brought Down Apartheid in South Africa.
Additionally, “34% of Democratic primary voters (and 47% of Gen Z Democrats) say US foreign policy and relations with Israel will play a factor in their vote in 2026 and that they would prefer to reduce support for Israel, compared to just 6% who say relations with Israel will be a factor for their vote and that they would prefer to maintain or increase US support for Israel.” [Italics mine]
Clearly, a new consensus in support of Palestinian rights has formed amongst Democrats.
But you wouldn’t know that from paying attention to Democrats in Congress, where the Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer refused to endorse NYC mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani because of his criticism of Israel’s genocide, and Schumer’s House counterpart, Hakeem Jeffries, waited until the last minute to offer a tepid endorsement. Neither has spoken out against Israel’s genocide nor called for withholding military aid to the nation.
And you wouldn’t know it from listening to Rep. Steny Hoyer on his recent summer trip to Israel, where he laundered Israeli propaganda in direct contravention of the evidence that Israel is deliberately killing civilians:
“What we found is that contrary to world opinion, Israel has been doing everything it possibly can to ensure that there’s minimal damage to civilians who are not part of Hamas’s army,” Representative Steny H. Hoyer, Democrat of Maryland and long an unofficial leader of the junket, said in a video he recorded for AIPAC during the trip in August.
Many Democrats, especially newly elected officials and candidates, are distancing themselves from AIPAC and, albeit still cautiously, supporting Palestinian rights.
The same article mentioned above notes that the annual AIPAC trip was less attended this year than before — only 11 out of 33 freshman House Democrats participated. In previous years, a freshman trip to Israel was basically a rite of passage, and 7 Democrats even backed out after initially agreeing to go. Additionally, “some of the new members who did go received backlash in their districts for participating in an AIPAC-aligned trip.”
However, the party’s leadership still refuses to change course and truly align with its voters. How can any political party—created to represent people—refuse to reflect its own supporters’ views?
Simply put, the U.S. political system is broken due to the insane amount of corporate, PAC, and high-income (billionaire) campaign donations. The richest Americans have flooded the political system with so much cash that it has debased the value of regular voters and the ballots they cast.
A Princeton University study concluded that the U.S. functions less as a robust democracy and more as an oligarchy: “economic elites and organised groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on US government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.”
Only campaign finance reform that bans big money in politics can fix this problem and ensure that the American people are truly represented by their political “representatives.”
What’s true for Wall Street, pharmaceutical companies, big business, and so on is also true for Israel and its lobby, primarily AIPAC. These groups represent special interests often at odds with public opinion, but they consistently manage to secure their interests because money buys power.
The point is clear when discussing, say, Wall Street’s influence on Capitol Hill, but until recently, it was considered antisemitic to say that AIPAC buys influence in Congress. For example, when Rep. Ilhan Omar described Congressional support for Israel as being “all about the Benjamins,” and when asked to clarify, she said AIPAC, she was accused of promoting an antisemitic conspiracy theory.
If Rep. Omar claimed that the NRA is why many members of Congress oppose gun control reform, no one would bat an eye.
Is AIPAC the only reason many members of Congress unconditionally support Israel? Clearly not. Republicans, for example, have a pro-Israel base, particularly among Evangelical Christians. Support for Israel remains strong in American life, even among many older Democrats who still hold on to an image of a more liberal-minded Israel from earlier generations.
But it’s also true that gun culture is a major part of American life, and many Americans oppose gun control. Still, no one would doubt that the NRA has traditionally had an outsized influence on Congressional and White House policies.
As put succiently elsewhere:
To draw a connection between pro-Israel donations and the often slavish support for Israel exhibited by many American politicians is simply recognizing the obvious. AIPAC and the newly formed Democratic Majority for Israel (DMFI) know that money buys clout in politics. That’s why DMFI and the AIPAC-backed United Democracy Project super PAC were launched to arrest growing support for Palestinian human rights among liberal Democrats.
Simply put, would donors part with millions of dollars if congressional policies on Israel were not subject to political pressure?
So let’s examine what that political pressure looks like:
First, there’s AIPAC, whose members donate to the organization’s political action committee (PAC), which AIPAC in turn donates to members of Congress and political candidates.
According to OpenSecrets, which tracks money in American politics, AIPAC is the top donor to the top three House Democratic leaders: House Minority Leader Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, Minority Whip Rep. Katherine Clark, and third-in-command Rep. Pete Aguilar.
Rep. James E Clyburn, fourth in line, counts AIPAC as his third-largest donor.
It is also worth noting that the highest-ranking Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, who will likely become the committee chair if Democrats flip the House in the 2026 midterms, Rep. Gregory Meeks, also counts AIPAC as his top donor.
However, billionaires influence politicians not only through donations to special interest groups but also through direct contributions to the politician’s campaign or an affiliated PAC.
Consider Israeli-American billionaire and major financial backer of the IDF, Haim Saban, who, by his own admission, is a “one-issue guy, and my issue is Israel.” Taking him at his word, it is fair to say that every donation Saban makes is meant to pressure politicians to be very pro-Israel.
Saban is one of the Democratic Party’s top donors, who, back in the early 2000s, made the single-largest donation to a political party (at the time at least) by gifting the Democratic National Committee a check for $7 million.
Before Biden dropped out in 2024, Saban donated $1 million each to AIPAC’s PAC and the Biden campaign, each of which should be seen as pro-Israel money in American politics.
In 2024, when Biden suspended some arms shipments to Israel, Saban sent an email to the White House decrying the move and engaged in a political blackmail interwoven with Islamophobia: “Let’s not forget that there are more Jewish voters who care about Israel, than Muslims [sic] voters that care about Hamas.”
In aggregate, Saban donated over $5 million to Democrats in the last election. Needless to say, Saban is hardly the only major pro-Israel donor to the Democratic Party.
Deborah Simon, the daughter of the late Simon Malls magnate, is one of the nation’s top political donors. In the last election, 2024, she ranked 24th in the country with over $24 million in donations, all to Democrats.
Simon is a major donor to the misnamed Anti-Defamation League and last year donated $1 million to the Democratic Majority for Israel (DMFI), a virulently hateful organization:
“The DMFI’s board of directors includes Archie Gottesman, who also co-founded JewBelong, a group that has posted pink billboards in US cities in support of Israel including one that declared: ‘Trust Me. If Israel Wanted to Commit Genocide in Gaza, It Could’.”
This is the same Gottesman who tweeted in 2021, “Gaza is full of monsters. Time to burn the whole place.” DFMI was started in the past few years precisely to counter growing pro-Palestinian sentiment in the party.
Or take billionaire venture capitalist Gary Lauder, another major Democratic donor who, in the last election cycle, donated half a million to DFMI.
Other major pro-Israel Democrat donors include the couple Michael J. & Cari Sacks, who are listed as one of the nation’s top 100 political donors. In the last election, they donated $5,776,900 to Democrats. Michael Sacks also donated $250,000 to AIPAC’s political fund during the same period.
Billionaire Jonathan Tisch is an AIPAC and Democrat donor, contributing $100,000 to the pro-Israel group in 2023-24. If you’re wondering why Hillary Clinton is super pro-Israel, consider that Tisch held a $33,000-a-head fundraiser for Hillary Clinton during her 2016 presidential campaign.
A New Yorker, Tisch donated $1.3 million to an anti-Mamdani political action committee, and his cousin Benjamin Tisch recently called Mamdani an “enemy” of the Jewish people.
And the list goes on…
Philanthropist Martha Karsh, for instance, donated nearly $1.4 million to the Harris Victory Fund last year, according to the Federal Elections Commission — and donated $250,000 to DFMI in the same election cycle. And Democrat Jacob H. Cappell made the same donation amount to DFMI. Other individuals could be added to the list, too.
It is important to note that as the AIPAC brand becomes toxic, the DFMI has become a way to funnel pro-Israel campaign donations to Democrats. Many Democratic Zionist donors are merely trying to reroute their money via a lesser-known outfit.
Some pro-Israel candidates have even claimed they are not taking money from AIPAC, only to be taking money surreptitiously from AIPAC donors. As it become political unteanable to be openly aligned with AIPAC, Zionist donors are seeking to influence candidates through new groups like DFMI:
To not be fooled: DFMI is “run by former AIPAC consultant Mark Mellman.” There is no difference between the two: DFMI is an AIPAC front group that is just as hateful and committed to defeating pro-Palestinian candidates.
While DMFI is ostensibly organized around the politics of Israel, in practice, it has become a weapon wielded by the party’s centrist faction against its progressive wing.
