A powerful rightwing pressure group, the American Legislative Exchange Council (Alec), is engineering pledges of unconditional support for Israel’s attack on Gaza by state legislatures across the US.
Alec is promoting a model resolution expressing “support for Israel’s right to pursue without interference or condemnation the elimination of Hamas”. A version has been accepted by legislatures in at least eight states, including Pennsylvania, Nebraska and North Dakota.
The resolution adopts Israeli claims that Hamas uses “civilians as human shields” and names Iran as giving logistical support to the group.
Some state legislatures have also denounced calls for a ceasefire in Israel’s assault on Gaza, where the health ministry says more than 11,000 Palestinians have been killed, two-thirds of them women and children.
Although state legislatures have limited direct influence over Washington’s policy on Israel, Alec and allied groups have long been instrumental in mobilising political pressure by pushing local legislation and resolutions in support of the Jewish state. They include laws to block and punish support for the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians.
Alec, which is corporate-funded but has deep ties to Christian evangelicals strongly supportive of Israel, pushed the model resolution to state legislatures after an emergency meeting two weeks ago. A copy of the agenda obtained by the Center for Media and Democracy shows that the presentation of the case for supporting Israel was made by Rabbi Aryeh Lightstone, who is close to the country’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
Netanyahu offered Lightstone a leading role in his 2021 election campaign, according to the Times of Israel, after the Orthodox rabbi worked as a senior aide to the US ambassador to Jerusalem in the Trump administration, David Friedman.
Among the others who spoke at the Alec meeting was the Texas state senator Phil King, a member of the group’s board of directors. He was the lead sponsor of a bill in support of Israel’s attack on Gaza passed by the Texas senate two days after Hamas killed about 1,200 people and abducted more than 200 in its cross-border assault on 7 October.
The resolution accused Hamas of using human shields and said Israel had the “right to pursue without interference or condemnation the elimination of Hamas”.
King said that the Texas bill formed the basis of Alec’s model resolution for other states.
“Alec encouraged other state legislatures to adopt similar resolutions which condemn Hamas’ attack on Israel and supports Israel’s right to eliminate Hamas,” he wrote.
King was at the forefront of pushing other pro-Israel legislation in Texas. He co-authored a law against boycotts of Israel and was instrumental in Texas becoming the first state to establish a commission to oversee enforcement of the controversial International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism, which critics say has at times been used to shut down criticism of the Jewish state.
King has also helped forge ties between Israel and the Texas energy companies, and has made trips to Jewish settlements in the occupied territories.
Karla Jones, the senior director of Alec’s international relations taskforce, told a St Louis radio programme that the Hamas attacks invigorated support for Israel.
“This has been one of the most energising issues I think I’ve ever seen. At Alec, we invoked what’s called our expedited situation provision to consider model policy rapidly in 10 days. We have already adopted the model policy and it was adopted unanimously by the members by both public- and private-sector members of our taskforce,” she said.
Alec’s chief executive, Lisa Nelson, sent an email to supporters last week saying the organisation has “long supported the Israeli people” and urging Americans to press members of their state legislatures to pass the resolution. She listed the states that have adopted Alec’s model wording in some form or other.
“If your state is not on that list, it should be,” she wrote.
Alec’s national chair, the speaker of the Florida house of representatives, Daniel Perez, told a Christian talk radio station that the state legislature called a special session to consider a resolution in support of Israel that says the Jewish state has the right to defend itself “by eliminating Hamas without ceasefire or pause”.
The Nebraska legislature adopted Alec’s language about Hamas using Palestinians as human shields and expressed unconditional support for Israel’s assault on Gaza.
North Dakota passed a resolution that said Hamas was evidently in “receipt of support and funding from foreign state sponsors of terror, namely Iran”. It too said that Israel has the right to pursue its war aims in Gaza “without interference or condemnation”.
In Pennsylvania, a version sponsored by politicians with ties to Alec said that “Israel has every right to defend itself with all due and overwhelming force”. A resolution backed by one-third of the Wyoming legislature said Israel is in a “battle over good over evil” and opposes calls for a ceasefire in Gaza.
Last year Alec promoted a variation of an older resolution passed by several states that included a statement that “Israel is neither an attacking force nor an occupier of the lands of others”, apparently endorsing the Israeli right wing’s claim that Palestinian lands belong to the Jewish state.
Earlier versions of the same resolution explicitly supported “the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people in the historical region of the Land of Israel”, including the occupied West Bank.
Alec led the way in the drafting of laws adopted in more than 30 states to block support for the BDS movement. The group has also sought ways to restrict criticism of Israel on US university campuses under the guise of combatting antisemitism.
Israeli officials, including diplomats and a leader of a group representing Jewish settlers in the West Bank, have attended Alec meetings in the past.
