INTRODUCTION

The report is the latest issue of our ‘Palestine Policy Memos’, which explores different aspects of U.S. policy engagement on the Palestinian struggle for freedom. This is our first in-depth dive into election spending by right-wing Zionist groups, what that spending achieved, and more crucially what it failed to achieve in the face of the progress we’re making in the struggle for justice in Palestine.

How much money did right-wing Zionists spend to impact the midterms? Which candidates were their biggest recipients? And which impressive candidates challenged their heavily-funded smear machine and won? These are all questions answered in our latest report.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The 2022 midterm elections were historic in many ways. The 2022 midterms saw the election of Maxwell Frost, the first “Generation Z” Member of Congress, Summer Lee, the first African-American woman elected to Congress in Pennsylvania, and Abdelnasser Rashid and Ruwa Romman, the first Palestinian-Americans to be elected to the Illinois and Georgia State House of Representatives. Races across the United States also saw the injection of millions of dollars from rightwing Zionist organizations into our electoral politics. Millions were spent to crush candidates deemed as ‘insufficiently pro-Israel’ and millions more were spent to punish candidates that intended to stand up for Palestinian rights. Although the right wing Zionist groups were able to defeat candidates in a few key races, they certainly did not win all battles. In fact, they failed to secure wins in key battles where they spent millions of dollars. In this paper, our research explores election spending by rightwing Zionist groups, the candidates most heavily funded by this money, and the impressive candidates who stood up to them and won.