Introduction
As part of our “Palestine Policy Memos“, we released our preliminary report “Rightwing Zionist Money & Its Influence on U.S. Elections” back in November. Our FINAL report is finally out.
During the 2022 mid-term elections, right-wing Zionist groups spent more than $70 million dollars to crush dissent and solidify an extremist pro-Israel agenda in Congress. Their targets ranged from vocal critics of Israeli apartheid, to moderate Zionists who expressed reservations about Israel’s occupation. And yet, despite their best efforts, some candidates stood up to AIPAC’s smears and bullying and still won.
Read our new special report to learn the details about what happened and how this new wave of right-wing zionist money in politics will have significant consequences for Palestinian advocacy in the upcoming years.
Executive Summary
The 2022 midterm elections were historic in many ways. The midterms witnessed the election of Maxwell Frost, the first “Generation Z” Member of Congress, Summer Lee, the first African-American woman elected to Congress from Pennsylvania, and Abdelnasser Rashid and Ruwa Romman, the first Palestinian-Americans to be elected to the Illinois and Georgia State House of Representatives. 2022 also saw the consolidation of the right-wing and extremist Zionist political industry behind two extremist Zionist 501c(4) Political Action Committees (PACs) and the subsequent injection of millions of dollars into national U.S. 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 right-wing Zionist groups were able to defeat candidates in a few key races, they certainly didn’t win all battles, failing to secure victories in key races, such as in the race for PA-34, where they invested millions of dollars. In this paper, AJP Action explores election spending by extremist Zionist groups, the candidates most heavily funded by this money, and the impressive candidates who stood up to them and won.
