AIPAC Has a New Opponent: PAL PAC
A new organization seeks to upend the calculus of Israel-Palestine inside Washington, and end the Israel lobby’s decades-long hold over US politics.
After spending decades and decades lobbying and intimidating members of Congress into supporting Israel, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee has a new counter-weight.
The Peace, Accountability, and Leadership PAC launched Wednesday, marking its quest to channel the massively shifting US political winds on the issue of Israel and Palestine into the halls of Congress. The political action committee seeks to support elected officials advancing the cause of Palestinian civil rights and liberation from Israel’s violent and illegal occupation.
The launch comes the same day Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visits President Donald Trump for the sixth time in just the past year (almost as many visits as the number of Americans killed by Israeli violence in the past two years).
PAL PAC is launching with endorsements for four members of Congress, with more to be announced soon. The initial endorsed four are Democratic Reps. Rashida Tlaib (Mich.), Delia Ramirez (Ill.), Summer Lee (Pa.), and Ilhan Omar (Minn.).
“As the only Palestinian-American working in Congress, I’ve had a front row seat to our government’s complicity in the genocide. I’m committed to human rights for all, and this means an arms embargo and an end to US complicity and support of the Israeli apartheid government, ongoing war crimes and human rights abuses,” Tlaib said in a statement.
“The Peace, Accountability, and Leadership PAC has my full support as the only PAC exclusively committed to justice and accountability for the Palestinian people,” she added.