Is AIPAC Still the Chosen One?

For decades, AIPAC has dominated DC's Israel lobby. But a popular president and dissent within the advocacy ranks could lead to a showdown on Middle East policy.

Jeremy Ben-Ami, the slight and soft-spoken executive director of J Street, says the change on Capitol Hill is palpable. More and more members of Congress see AIPAC as an obstacle to America's crucial national interest—a durable Middle East peace deal. "Our role is to demonstrate that there is significant and meaningful political support for leadership to achieve peace," Ben-Ami says.

In January, when Obama named former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell as his special Middle East envoy, J Street got 104 legislators to sign a statement supporting Mitchell. (The traditional Israel lobby views Mitchell, in the words of the Anti-Defamation League's Abraham Foxman, as a little too "even-handed.") In May, when AIPAC's warning letter to Obama began amassing signatures in the House—it ultimately got 328—J Street and its allies put out a competing House letter calling for strong American leadership that accumulated 86 names. "There are a number of members of Congress who are seeking out new voices on the issue," says Rep. Donna Edwards (D-Md.), one of those 86, who visited Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza in May. "There is still a resistance to having open, honest dialogue out of fear about being on the wrong side of AIPAC, but I'm not going to be driven by what one lobby says. What I learned on my trip is that I don't think AIPAC represents even the majority view in Israel."

Netanyahu, who made a pilgrimage to Capitol Hill last spring after meeting with Obama, discovered the emerging new reality firsthand. The Forward, a Jewish newspaper based in Manhattan, quoted the prime minister's aides as saying their boss was "stunned" by "what seemed like a well-coordinated attack against his stand on settlements," even from traditional Israel supporters like John Kerry (D-Mass.), who chairs the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, and Carl Levin (D-Mich.), chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee—as well as representatives Berman and Henry Waxman (D-Calif.). While all have impeccable credentials with the Israel lobby, it's clear that they're increasingly unhappy with Jerusalem's hard-right tilt. And when legislators can point to different views within the Israel policy community, it's harder for groups like AIPAC to accuse them of being anti-Israel. More