Why is everyone so afraid to talk about AIPAC?

Over the past week, hundreds of thousands of Israelis have poured into the streets night after night to protest against the Netanyahu government’s failure to halt the bloodshed in Gaza.

Meanwhile, in the U.S., polls show that 6 in 10 Americans — including huge majorities of Democratic and independent voters — oppose continued weapons shipments to Israel.

And yet in the halls of Congress and the Biden administration, these views are dismissed as far-left fringe ideas.

What explains the yawning gap between the political class and public opinion? One major factor is the lobbying power and massive political spending of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

But most major news outlets treat AIPAC as a taboo subject — the organization whose name cannot be spoken.

The Intercept will never be intimidated into pulling punches when it comes to AIPAC or any other big-money special interest — and with nearly 41,000 dead in Gaza and half a million facing catastrophic levels of hunger, our reporting on AIPAC has never been more critical.

Will you donate $5 to support The Intercept’s investigations into AIPAC — and our ongoing coverage of Israel’s war on Gaza?

In the last two election cycles, AIPAC has poured nearly $40 million into elections while pushing out four progressive Democrats who had dared to criticize Israel: Jamaal Bowman, Cori Bush, Andy Levin, and Marie Newman. Only one other House Democrat in the entire country was defeated by a non-incumbent primary opponent over that time frame.

Progressives targeted by AIPAC are warning fellow Democrats about the role that the pro-Israel lobby played in silencing critics of Israel’s human rights abuses in Congress, as well as Democrats’ complicity.

“Their role in my primary was egregious,” Bush told The Intercept after AIPAC spent at least $8 million on ads to defeat her. “But what will they do next? Because what they’re ultimately trying to do is move Democrats further to the right. ... It was Jamaal and I this time, but who is it going to be in two years?”

But it’s unclear whether party leaders are listening, and the major corporate news media is hardly covering AIPAC’s influence at all.

The Intercept has provided vital reporting on Israel’s U.S.-backed war on Gaza from the start. Now, we’re exposing how AIPAC has leveraged its campaign spending to keep billions in unconditional military aid flowing to Benjamin Netanyahu’s war on Gaza.

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