GONE are the days when United States elections used to be about growing the country. Or about making America great again, as former US president Donald Trump put it.
Today, as evidenced by the midterm Democratic primary elections, they are about defending Israel. If lawmakers who support the Palestinian cause thought they were safe in America, they were very wrong.
The US is no longer a "free world", especially for those who want to see the end of occupation of Palestinian land or Israeli settler colonialism. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac), a lobbying group that advocates pro-Israel policies to the legislative and executive branches of the US, is pouring millions of dollars to make sure that no lawmaker who is critical of Israel gets elected to the Congress.
The White House isn't safe from Aipac's intervention either. Each time Aipac succeeds in getting pro-Israel candidates elected to the Congress or into the White House, American democracy dies a thousand deaths.
Candidates don't get to debate political, economic and social issues related to the US. Even if the candidates do get to discuss them, they come in Aipac's crosshairs the moment they begin to be critical of Israel.
Aipac, through its affiliate organisation, the United Democracy Project (UDP), a political action committee, tries to unseat lawmakers it doesn't like by negative ads in all manner of media. Last week, Maryland Congresswoman Donna Edwards, a strong supporter of the Palestinian cause, lost to Aipac-sponsored Glenn Ivey, on whom the Israeli lobby group is reported to have spent US$6 million.
That's a lot of money for negative ads. Aipac unashamedly admitted to intervening in getting Ivey elected. According to The New York Times, the politics of the Israeli-Palestine divide have roiled Democratic primaries in South Texas, Cleveland, North Carolina, Illinois, California and Pennsylvania. Michigan is up next with Aipac-sponsored Haley Stevens, an evangelical Christian, being pitted against progressive Democrat incumbent Andy Levin, who is Jewish.
Apparently, Aipac views evangelical Christians as a more powerful ally of Israel than Jews. But the most prized progressive Democratic seats for Aipac will be that of Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib.
Aipac is giving a new meaning to George Bush's "you are with us, or against us" by interfering in political races. It was not always like this. For 70 years Aipac did not raise money for candidates, though it intervened by other subtle means.
That changed in December and we are seeing the switch during this cycle of primaries. One such change was Aipac setting up the UDP with US$8.5 million seed money, says the NYT.
There is another danger lying behind all this money. Aipac has thus far spent US$22 million, much of which comes from corporate America and the billionaire class as former presidential candidate Berrnie Sanders once told the newspaper.
Many of the billionaires are Republican party members. To Sanders, Aipac and its affiliates are doing everything to make the Democratic and Republican parties beholden to corporate America and billionaires.
What's worse, Aipac is making the two parties beholden to Israel. A far cry from Abraham Lincoln's a government of the people, by the people, for the people.
A government by one per cent of America for the people of Israel? This certainly isn't the America the founding fathers built.
