California gubernatorial candidate Tom Steyer says that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, "is a dark money organization that should have no place in our politics."

In other words, Steyer believes supporters of the Israel-United States alliance, which includes many Jewish Americans, should be barred from participating in electoral politics like everyone else in America.

Steyer, who spent $345 million on his failed presidential campaign in 2020 and has already dropped $38 million on his gubernatorial race, is a longtime major funder of leftist "dark money" groups himself. Yet, the billionaire doesn't believe Americans less fortunate than he should be permitted to pool their money and fight for issues important to them.

The Democrats' new AIPAC obsession is just a convenient way to tap into some ugly conspiracies and fearmongering about Jewish money and its alleged control over our politics. Democrats are increasingly, as The New York Times might put it, "J-pilled."

There are, of course, wholly legitimate criticisms of American foreign policy. But Jew-baiting progressives such as Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) don't merely argue that AIPAC sits on the wrong side of a foreign policy issue but that it wants to steal constituents' health care and child care to enrich war profiteers and genocidal maniacs.

Our aid to Israel, incidentally, constitutes somewhere in the vicinity of 0.06% of the federal budget. Meanwhile, Israeli tech and commercial interests operating within the United States generate billions in economic activity here and create thousands of high-wage jobs.

Yet, it's become difficult to function within left-wing politics, increasingly dominated by the Green-Red alliance of socialists and pro-Islamists, without condemning the bogeymen of AIPAC and Israel.

Take Gov. JB Pritzker (D-Ill.), a one-time donor to the group, who now justifies his opposition to the PAC by claiming the group only supports "Donald Trump and people who follow Donald Trump."

As far as I can tell, AIPAC has given Trump zero dollars. The group is far more inclined to get involved in primary races, many of which neither candidate supports Trump, but feature unhinged antisemitic communist conspiracists such as Jamaal Bowman or Cori Bush.

AIPAC is going to have a lot more on its plate moving forward. As of now, though you'd never know it, AIPAC is a minor player in American politics. In 2024, it spent around $50 million on all races. There was $2.68 billion spent by PACs in that cycle, and yet AIPAC is surely mentioned far more by liberals than all other PACs combined.

AIPAC's lobbying expenditures, somewhere around $3.3 to 3.8 million a year, rank them somewhere in the 200s on the list of spenders. To put that in perspective, Eileen Gu was reportedly paid around twice as much to ski for China at the last Olympics as AIPAC spends in a year lobbying.

Moreover, AIPAC accounts for every dollar it spends. It's not a foreign entity. It's an American organization funded by American citizens. Whether liberals and isolationists like it or not, the U.S. government engages in foreign policy. Foreign policy includes decisions made by politicians on which countries we ally with. Americans have every right to finance organizations that lobby for an alliance with the Jewish State. That right is literally protected in the Constitution.

Indeed, if you could buy administrations, the U.S. government would have turned on Israel long ago.

In 2025, Saudi Arabia spent $69 million lobbying our government. Turkey spent $55 million. Since 2016, China has spent $534,317,884 on lobbying the U.S. Saudi Arabia, $391,367,687. Qatar spent $266,715,096. The United Arab Emirates spent $262,511,999.

All these countries, plus Japan, Liberia, South Korea, the Marshall Islands and the Bahamas, have outspent Israel over that time in lobbying.

That's just FARA-reported spending. The sheikdom of Qatar, a country of 360,000 citizens, pumps billions into American institutions to spread its authoritarian ideas. We have no clue how much the Chinese Communist Party spends on propaganda efforts.

Yet, most of the AIPAC howlers have nothing to say about Gulf States that are as gung-ho for war against Iran as anyone. There probably wasn't a single sign held up at any "No Kings" rally anywhere in the country lamenting the Saudi or Qatar influence in the U.S.

Then again, most "anti-Zionists" just don't have the guts to say "Jews." At least, not yet.

Despite being a strong supporter of the Israel-U.S. alliance, I've never much cared for AIPAC in the past. Ironically, the risk-averse organization was milquetoast and ineffective, more concerned with putting on splashy bipartisan Washington conferences with big-name guests than working in trenches.

Then again, before the pro-Hamas left-wing and (increasingly the isolationist right) gained footholds in their parties, having a beneficial two-way partnership with a confident and morally and ideologically compatible ally wasn't controversial for good reasons.

For the first time, however, AIPAC is actually needed.

David Harsanyi is a senior writer at the Washington Examiner. Harsanyi is a nationally syndicated columnist and author of five books — the most recent, "How To Kill a Republic," available now. His work has appeared in National Review, the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Reason, New York Post and numerous other publications. Follow him on X @davidharsanyi.

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