It's hard to hear about the November elections without the role of PACs and big-money donors coming into the conversation. Most voters are aware of the power and sway of the National Rifle Association, Pharma, Tech, and Wall Street. Now, for the rest of the populace, AIPAC (The American Israel Public Affairs Committee) has never been so prominent a factor.
For those who have watched their actions vigilantly, it was hard to miss their efforts to defeat Rep. Andy Levin, who had served as the Congressman from Detroit, Michigan. A Jew who self-identified as a Zionist, AIPAC wanted Levin out of office because they were not happy with his criticisms of the Israeli government.
AIPAC has gained a reputation for specifically working to defeat progressive candidates, often from minority backgrounds, who have called out Israel on its conduct in Gaza. Most recently, they spent $32 million to defeat Abdul El-Sayed in the Michigan Democratic Senate primary.
The tide appears to be shifting, and the new book , Israel's Lobby: America In the Grip of a Foreign Power by Eli Clifton and Ian Lustick, finds itself propitiously placed as diverse arguments about Israel and dark dollars in politics swirl around. In 2007, John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt wrote The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy. Authors Clifton and Lustick acknowledge their debt to that work. Two decades later, they have a plethora of additional material to buttress their premises.
In the "Introduction" to the book, the authors devote several paragraphs to clarifying that "the overwhelming majority of Jewish Americans do not prioritize Israel's well-being or its interests at a meaningful level in determining their voting decisions." They note that Israel "ranked ninth out of eleven issues of importance for Jewish voters in the 2024 election."
Clifton and Lustick additionally underscore that the term "Israel's Lobby" covers a wide range of entities that include Christian Evangelical organizations, political neo-conservatives, as well as Jewish or Israeli-American megadonors. All are adding muscle to elevate the perceived needs of Israel over the intrinsic priorities of the United States.
The authors realize they are on "sensitive" ground that puts them squarely in the middle of the most inflammatory issues of the day as they reference "antisemitism, the influence of Jewish and Israeli-American political donors, and the role of a country created in the aftermath of the Holocaust."
The tone is set with a story about the actions of a couple "at the top of the political donor class," Sheldon (now deceased) and Miriam Adelson. After three decades of Israel calling upon American Presidents to grant "clemency" to the domestic spy Jonathan Pollard (who stole top-secret American intelligence for Israel, compromising American national security), the Adelsons commandeered Trump as the vehicle to fulfill that request. (There is extensive documentation for each chapter. The damage assessment report from 1987, since declassified, is included.)
Pollard was spirited back to Israel (and met by Benjamin Netanyahu at the airport) in a private jet provided by the couple. Miriam gets plenty of coverage throughout the book with her role as a major player on the political scene ($100 million to a PAC geared toward Trump, with a sidebar of $37 million to Republican down-ballot candidates in 2024). Her overwhelming monetary support of Israel's agenda will be part of the authors' proof of the leverage of their money to "extract unconditional aid, coordination, and support at a scale and for a duration beyond anything a great power has ever done for a foreign country."
Clifton and Lustick give plenty of stats on the aid Israel has received from the American government, while also questioning if the influx of financial support has fueled "reckless Israeli policies" in opposition to American "interests in a stable Middle East." (Think Israeli military engagements in Lebanon, Syria, and now Iran.) Yet, as the authors point out, since October 2025, "41 percent of all Americans sought a reduction in military aid to Israel."
And this is just in the opening pages".
Divided into six chapters, Clifton and Lustick take on individual questions comprising what they see as the key elements of this toxic stew. They start with a primer that goes back to George Washington's 1796 Farewell Address, which cautioned about the nefarious consequences of American "passionate attachments toward foreign countries." It was about "avoiding foreign entanglements" during that historical period when individual "elites" were predisposed to "revolutionary France."
From there, the text delves into the origins of AIPAC (originally the American Zionist Committee for Public Affairs). The authors state the evolution emanated from an effort to shield Israel from public reproach in response to the actions of "bloody reprisal raids" that were carried out against Palestinian villages in the 1950s. By the 1960s, AIPAC had become a recognizable force within the "pro-Israel community."
AIPAC released its 2025 membership numbers as 5 million. Clifton and Lustick have pegged its primary influence to what they call the "AIPAC litmus test." They use the example of what they call the "Percy factor." It was the defeat of Republican Senator Charles Percy, who was unseated in 1984 in response to his vote to sell "an advanced weapon system" to Saudi Arabia. For AIPAC, the bottom line on a candidate boils down to "whether they are loyal to AIPAC preferences on Israel."
There is the narrative recounting how, in 1992, the President of AIPAC, David Steiner, was secretly recorded in a conversation that later was shared with the Washington Times. It encapsulated his beliefs (and others about the roots of their advocacy): "If we had had AIPAC in the '30s and '40s we would have saved millions of Jews. We would have had political power. But Jews were afraid to open their mouths."
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