The warning for AIPAC in Tom Malinowski's primary loss

[Jilly_in_VA]

When the American Israel Public Affairs Committee decided to spend big in the New Jersey special election to fill the U.S. House seat Mikie Sherrill vacated when elected governor, it was following a familiar strategy. By punishing a politician the group viewed as an apostate, it might get a friendly vote in the House; if nothing else, the race would be an object lesson: Cross AIPAC and you’ll come to regret it.

But things didn’t work out that way. The race turned out to be a lesson in AIPAC’s diminishing power and the rapidly changing politics around the America-Israel relationship.

Former Rep. Tom Malinowski, the early favorite in the crowded Democratic primary, conceded on Tuesday to Analilia Mejia, a progressive who garnered endorsements from the likes of Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Through the United Democracy Project, its affiliated super PAC, AIPAC poured more than $2 million into attack ads targeting Malinowski, though they didn’t mention Israel, making it a stealth effort.

In his previous two terms in Congress, Malinowski supported Israel. But AIPAC targeted him because he now says we should condition that support on some basic respect for human rights. “I committed one sin in their minds,” Malinowski said in January. “I was not willing to tell them that I would unconditionally, unquestionably, blindly support any request for assistance that Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel might make.”

That was too much for AIPAC, which maintains a zero-tolerance policy toward any cracks in U.S. support for Benjamin Netanyahu’s government. Clearly, the group hoped that knocking out Malinowski in the primary would help a candidate it might find more reliable. But Mejia is poised to be a stronger critic of Israel than her opponents would have been, and other politicians may be a little less afraid of AIPAC going forward. As they should be.

https://www.ms.now/opinion/aipac-new-jersey-special-election-malinowski-majia-israel

It's about damn time.