Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says US Congress is 'overly influenced' by AIPAC

Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) said on Saturday that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) has too much influence over U.S. Congress and is causing voters to leave the Democratic Party.

“If people want to talk about members of Congress being overly influenced by a special interest group pushing a wildly unpopular agenda that pushes voters away from Democrats, then they should be discussing AIPAC,” AOC wrote in a post on 𝕏.

Her post was made in response to Jeremey Slevin, who posted that “corporate and industry lobbies” are “by far the most influential ‘groups’ in the Democratic Party.” Slevin is a senior advisor to Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. Slevin, like Sanders, is an American Jew who has been vocally critical of both AIPAC and the State of Israel.

Though AOC claimed in her post that AIPAC was pushing a “wildly unpopular agenda,” recent polling suggests most Americans support Israel in its current war against Hamas.

“A large majority (79%) of American voters say that they support Israel more than Hamas,” the Jerusalem Post reported.

AIPAC is a prominent pro-Israel lobbying group founded in 1954 and describes itself as “a national organization with more than five million grassroots members who want to strengthen and expand the U.S.-Israel relationship,” and says the organization “brings together Democrats and Republicans to advance our shared mission.”

While a large majority of AIPAC’s critics are left-wing politicians and activists, a few prominent conservatives have recently challenged the organization.

In an interview with Tucker Carlson, Republican Congressman Thomas Massie criticized AIPAC and Christians United for Israel (CUFI), which he argued is a “top-down movement from AIPAC so that people who aren’t even Jewish will feel like they’ve got to support Israel, you know, no matter what, even if it’s a secular state that funds abortions.”

Though Massie said he is “not against Israel” and “doesn’t have an antisemitic hair in my head,” he added that it is “concerning to me” that Israel has “killed 1% of the civilian population in Gaza.”

He also made headlines for saying that AIPAC assigns an “AIPAC babysitter” to each Republican member of Congress, and that there is no lobbying group that does something similar on behalf of another nation.

Massie said AIPAC has tried to “equate me with the Squad,” a group of progressive Democrats of which AOC is a part.

Tucker enthusiastically agreed with Massie’s assessment of AIPAC, though adding that he is “a legit lover of Israel, of the place Israel. I like the people and I love the food, and like the whole thing is so great – but that’s distinct from the government of Israel which is just a foreign government.”