A Democratic congressional delegation is under fire for a visit to Israel funded by the hardline lobbying group the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac), which is working to defeat other members of the party in next year’s elections.
Critics have accused the most senior Democrat on the tour, House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries, of giving political cover to the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who has faced months of huge demonstrations against his far-right government’s power grab.
They have also ridiculed videos by members of the delegation for making the visit to a country in turmoil look like “some junket to Tahiti”.
Hadar Susskind, president of Americans for Peace Now, said the Democratic delegation is “behind the times” in working with Aipac when it defends Israel’s ultranationalist government and the lobbying group’s political arm is increasingly funded by rightwing Republican billionaires seeking to defeat progressive members of Congress.
“For Democrats to be going on this trip funded and led around by an organisation that is fundamentally opposed to the policies of their president and their party – and which attacks the colleagues of the people on the trip very, very directly – is absurd. You’re seeing more and more Democrats saying, ‘You shouldn’t be doing that,’” he said.
Justice Democrats, which helped fund election campaigns for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other members of the “Squad” critical of Israeli policies, asked why the party was working with Aipac when it endorsed the re-election campaigns of more than 100 Republican members of Congress who tried to block Joe Biden’s presidential victory.
“It is a failure of Democratic leadership to continue working in any capacity with Aipac,” said Justice Democrats spokesperson Usamah Andrabi.
“Every Democratic member who went on this trip is endorsing Aipac’s rightwing primary challenges to their colleagues, the over 100 Republicans who voted to overturn the election, and the Israeli government’s brutal apartheid regime.”
Susskind said that Aipac’s influence could be seen in some of the positions taken by the 24-strong Democratic delegation which is mostly made up of newly elected members of Congress. They include Representative Shri Thanedar, whom Aipac spent $4m trying to defeat in a Democratic primary last year after he sponsored a resolution in the Michigan legislature describing Israel as an “apartheid state” and accusing it of “countless human rights violations”.
Aipac described the visit as an opportunity for the delegation to “experience the Jewish state first-hand and reaffirm the ties between both allies”.
After a meeting with Netanyahu, Jeffries defended the US’s $3.8bn a year in military aid to Israel without conditions even as pressure grows in Congress and beyond for the money to be reassessed because of the Israeli government’s attempts to curtail the power of the courts in part to facilitate the expanding takeover of the West Bank.
“The need to ensure we maintain Israel’s qualitative military edge will still be with us, regardless of where Israel lands in terms of the judicial reform effort,” Jeffries said.
“The stakes are too high in a very dangerous world for anything other than our continued security cooperation to remain ironclad.”
That statement of unequivocal support is in contrast to the growing calls for the US to attach conditions to its aid. Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland told the Guardian this week that Biden should reassess US assistance to prevent it from being used to facilitate annexation of the West Bank and oppression of the Palestinians.
In response to Jeffries’ comments, the “pro-Israel, pro-peace” group J Street said that aid should be judged according to whether it advances US and Israeli security.
“Our concern is that US tax dollars shouldn’t be funding material and arms that facilitate the deepening of occupation and the permanent demise of a possible Palestinian state. That’s not in anyone’s security interest,” said J Street’s president, Jeremy Ben-Ami.
Jeffries also faced accusations of whitewashing escalating Israeli settler violence against Palestinians.
The US state department described the recent killing of a Palestinian teenager by a settler as a “terror attack”. Netanyahu’s far-right national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, said the killer was “a hero” who deserved “a commendation”.
The Israeli civil rights group B’Tselem has characterised the attacks as “state violence” with the complicity of Israeli security forces as part of a strategy to take over Palestinian land.
Jeffries said he raised the issue with Netanyahu, who made “clear to us that he doesn’t condone violence, no matter where it originates”.
Netanyahu will also have been pleased with comments by Jeffries about the US’s unyielding support given repeated accusations by Yair Lapid, the former prime minister and leader of the opposition, that the government has badly damaged relations with Washington.
Leaders of the mass protest movement against the judicial reforms said the Democratic delegation did not respond to requests for a meeting. The Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, described Jeffries as making statements about the protests “that echo the emerging Republican talking points on the matter, rather than the growing number of Democrats voicing concern”.
Aipac posted a series of videos on Twitter of members of the delegation pledging their support for Israel that drew widespread ridicule, including of Representative Haley Stevens of Michigan on a bus with her fellow Democrats.
“That was embarrassing,” said Susskind. “It was as if they were on some junket in Tahiti and ignoring the reality of what was going on around them.”
