Black-Jewish Relations and the AIPAC Question

AIPAC is not synonymous with American Jews. But its single-issue electoral strategy has become one source of friction in Black-Jewish politics—and rebuilding the relationship requires confronting that tension honestly.

When Black and Jewish Americans talk about rebuilding the alliance of the civil rights era, we understandably return to powerful images. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel marched beside the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. at Selma. Jewish activists joined Freedom Summer. Jewish organizations worked alongside Black organizations on civil rights and voting rights. The Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism documents the substantial Jewish participation in the civil rights movement and the role Jewish organizations played in the broader coalition for racial equality.[1]

That history is real, but invoking it cannot by itself recreate the relationship. Nor should we romanticize the past into a time when Black and Jewish Americans agreed about everything. They did not. The relationship included disagreements over Israel, urban politics, education, affirmative action and other issues. What made the alliance consequential was not complete agreement but the ability of people in two communities to recognize important interests and moral concerns beyond their own.

Today the political landscape surrounding both communities has changed considerably. If Black and Jewish Americans are serious about understanding why the relationship sometimes feels different, we have to examine not only what historically brought the communities together but also what now creates friction between them.

One institutional source of that friction is AIPAC and its political network.

That requires some precision. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee is an American advocacy organization whose stated mission is strengthening the U.S.-Israel relationship. AIPAC PAC endorses candidates and directs contributions to them. United Democracy Project, created in 2022, is AIPAC’s affiliated super PAC; unlike a conventional PAC, it can raise and spend unlimited sums through independent expenditures supporting or opposing candidates.[2]

AIPAC is not synonymous with American Jews and does not speak for the community as a whole. Nor does criticism of AIPAC amount to criticism of Israel, Judaism or Jews. AIPAC describes itself as bipartisan and argues that maintaining support for Israel across party lines is essential to a durable U.S.-Israel relationship.

The difficulty for Black-Jewish coalition politics arises because AIPAC’s political organizations evaluate candidates principally through the lens of Israel, while Black voters generally bring a much broader set of domestic concerns to American politics. Over the past several election cycles, that difference has produced a striking juxtaposition: AIPAC’s political network has spent millions of dollars trying to defeat several prominent Black Democratic candidates while also supporting conservative Republicans whose positions on voting rights, democratic institutions and other domestic issues differ sharply from those of most Black voters.

That does not demonstrate racial animus. But political relationships are shaped by consequences as well as motives, and those consequences deserve examination.

What Black Americans Have Seen

The scale of AIPAC-related intervention in several races involving Black candidates matters because these were not marginal expenditures.

In 2024, Rep. Jamaal Bowman of New York faced one of the most expensive House primaries in American history. United Democracy Project spent almost $9.9 million opposing Bowman and nearly $4.8 million supporting his challenger, George Latimer. Bowman lost.[3]

Bowman’s positions on Israel plainly help explain the intervention. He had become one of Congress’s most outspoken critics of Israeli policy and made controversial statements after the October 7 Hamas attack, including comments regarding reports of sexual violence that he subsequently walked back. A fair account has to include those facts. The question for Black-Jewish relations is not whether AIPAC had political reasons for opposing him. It did. The question is what an intervention of that size can look like from outside AIPAC’s single-issue framework.

Cori Bush of Missouri was another major target. During her 2024 Democratic primary, United Democracy Project spent more than $5.2 million opposing Bush and another $3.3 million supporting Wesley Bell. Bush had become a strong critic of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, and she lost the primary.[3] Bell himself is Black, an important fact that makes any simple racial explanation inadequate.

Donna Edwards’s experience may be even more revealing because it occurred in 2022, well before October 7, 2023, and the Gaza war that followed. The former Maryland congresswoman attempted to return to Congress in Maryland’s 4th District. United Democracy Project spent $4.26 million opposing Edwards and $1.7 million supporting Glenn Ivey. Edwards lost.[4] Ivey, like Edwards, is Black. But J Street supported Edwards, demonstrating that the contest could not neatly be described as pro-Israel versus anti-Israel. It also reflected competing approaches within American pro-Israel politics itself.

Then there is Summer Lee of Pennsylvania. United Democracy Project spent more than $2 million trying unsuccessfully to defeat Lee in the 2022 Democratic primary. It returned in the general election and spent approximately another $1 million opposing her, even though her opponent was a Republican. Lee was the only candidate in that year’s general election to face UDP oppositional spending. She nevertheless won.[5]

Bowman, Bush, Edwards and Lee are not interchangeable. Their statements about Israel differed, their districts differed, and the circumstances of their races differed. Nor does the available evidence establish that AIPAC’s political organizations opposed them because they were Black. AIPAC supports many Black candidates, including Black candidates running against Black politicians it opposed.

The central question, then, is not whether racial animus motivated these expenditures; the record does not establish that. It is what political consequences follow when an organization prominently identified with pro-Israel advocacy repeatedly spends millions of dollars to defeat Black elected officials or candidates because AIPAC regards their positions on Israel as incompatible with its priorities.

For Black Americans watching national politics, that pattern can become part of how the contemporary Black-Jewish relationship is perceived, whether or not that was AIPAC’s intent.

The Other Half of the Equation

The tension becomes clearer when we look at whom AIPAC has been willing to support elsewhere.

When AIPAC PAC announced its first endorsements in 2022, 37 of its first 120 endorsees were Republican members of Congress who had voted against certifying Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential victory. AIPAC defended those endorsements by emphasizing that it is a single-issue organization focused on Israel.[6]

The controversy was not incidental to AIPAC’s strategy. Its leadership subsequently argued that the pro-Israel movement should not become selective about its friends at a moment when Israel faced serious threats. The logic was clear: politicians might disagree profoundly with AIPAC members on other questions yet still merit support because of their commitment to the U.S.-Israel relationship.[6]

That position has an internal consistency. AIPAC’s overriding purpose is not health care, racial inequality, voting rights, gun policy, economic opportunity or the broader domestic agenda. Its stated mission is strengthening the U.S.-Israel partnership. A politician can differ dramatically from Democratic constituencies on domestic questions and still satisfy AIPAC’s principal political test.

That is precisely where single-issue advocacy and coalition politics begin to diverge.

Black Americans do not generally approach politics as single-issue voters on Israel. Pew Research Center found in 2024 that 82% of Black adults said the president should give greater priority to domestic policy than foreign policy. Their leading priorities included education, the economy, Social Security, health care costs, poverty, crime and racial issues.[7]

The voting results reinforce the point without suggesting that Black voters are politically monolithic. Pew’s analysis of validated voters found that 83% of Black voters backed Kamala Harris in 2024 while 15% supported Donald Trump, up from 8% supporting Trump in 2020.[7]

The juxtaposition therefore matters. A Black Democrat can align with much of the Black electorate on domestic priorities but face millions of dollars in independent expenditures because of disagreement with AIPAC over Israel. At the same time, a conservative Republican may differ from most Black voters across numerous domestic issues, and may even have voted against certification of the 2020 election, yet remain acceptable to AIPAC because of strong support for the U.S.-Israel relationship.

From AIPAC’s standpoint, Israel supplies the connecting principle. From the standpoint of a broader Black-Jewish coalition, however, the political consequences are more complicated.

AIPAC Also Supports Black Politicians

Any serious analysis has to include the other part of the record.

AIPAC supports numerous Black elected officials. Glenn Ivey and Wesley Bell are obvious examples. AIPAC also reported that during the 2024 election cycle it was the top fundraiser for members of the Congressional Black Caucus. According to AIPAC’s own post-election accounting, AIPAC PAC endorsed 361 candidates that cycle, and 326 of those candidates won their general elections: 120 Democrats and 206 Republicans.[8]

Those facts significantly shape the argument. The evidence does not describe an organization systematically opposing Black representation. AIPAC supports Black candidates who meet its political criteria and opposes Black candidates who do not.

The source of the friction is therefore more complicated. It concerns which political commitments are permitted to outweigh which others.

A single-issue organization is entitled to organize its political activity around its issue. But a durable relationship between communities operates differently. It inevitably has to confront moments when one partner’s political choices affect interests the other regards as fundamental.

That is why AIPAC’s role cannot simply be dismissed as an internal matter of pro-Israel politics. When Selma and Freedom Summer are invoked as reasons Black and Jewish Americans should renew their historic partnership, contemporary political choices necessarily become part of the conversation as well.

More Than One Way to Be Pro-Israel

There is another reason the subject requires nuance: AIPAC does not possess the only American definition of what it means to support Israel.

J Street describes itself as “pro-Israel, pro-peace, pro-democracy.” It supports Israel as a democratic homeland for the Jewish people while also supporting Palestinian national self-determination and a negotiated resolution intended to meet the legitimate aspirations of both peoples.[9]

That distinction matters because it demonstrates that support for Israel can coexist with disagreement over settlements, Palestinian statehood, Israeli government policy, American assistance and the importance organizations assign to domestic democratic questions when evaluating candidates.

The differences are no longer merely theoretical. On September 10, 2026, J Street Action Fund announced a $3 million campaign in five congressional races against AIPAC-backed candidates. J Street explicitly framed the effort around its own conception of pro-Israel politics and the defense of American democracy.[10]

Whatever one’s view of either organization, their disagreement establishes an important fact: there is no single American pro-Israel political position.

That creates more room for honest Black-Jewish conversation. A Black Christian, Black Jew, Black elected official or Black voter can support Israel’s existence and security while criticizing an Israeli government, supporting Palestinian self-determination or preferring an approach different from AIPAC’s. American Jews themselves hold a range of views on those questions.

Recognizing that diversity expands the possibilities for coalition, while treating one organization’s political test as the boundary between being pro-Israel and being hostile to Israel narrows them.

Building an Alliance for 2026

The Black-Jewish alliance of the civil rights era did not arise because Black and Jewish Americans agreed on every political question. It grew in part because people in each community came to regard concerns important to the other as worthy of their own attention.

That is a more demanding standard than single-issue politics.

AIPAC has become one source of contemporary friction because its electoral strategy can be understood very differently depending on where one stands. From AIPAC’s perspective, opposing Bowman, Bush, Edwards or Lee while supporting other Black Democrats and conservative Republicans can be entirely consistent. The controlling question is the candidate’s approach to the U.S.-Israel relationship.

From another perspective, the same strategy raises questions about what happens to voting rights, racial equality, democratic participation and other domestic commitments when they conflict with an organization’s definition of support for Israel.

Neither observation requires accusing AIPAC of racial animus. Nor should criticism of AIPAC become a means of assigning collective responsibility to American Jews. AIPAC is an advocacy organization, not a synonym for Jewish Americans, just as the positions of individual Black members of Congress cannot be attributed to Black Americans generally.

A durable Black-Jewish coalition has to be broad enough to take seriously concerns that matter deeply within both communities: antisemitism and Israeli security, but also voting rights, racial equality, democratic participation and Black political representation. That does not require agreement on every policy question. It does require acknowledging that disagreements over Israel occur within both communities as well as between them.

The task here is not to decide whether AIPAC should organize around Israel; that is the purpose it has chosen for itself. The larger question is what happens when the priorities of a powerful single-issue political organization intersect with a relationship between communities whose interests and political commitments extend much further.

Remembering Selma still matters. But if Black and Jewish Americans are serious about understanding the relationship we have now, we also have to be willing to discuss the political choices that create friction between us. AIPAC is not the whole story of Black-Jewish relations. It is, however, part of the story, and pretending otherwise will not make the relationship stronger.

Selected Sources and Research Notes

[1] Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, “A Brief History of Jews and the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.” Documents Jewish participation in Freedom Summer, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel’s participation in the Selma march and the involvement of Jewish institutions in civil-rights advocacy.

[2] American Israel Public Affairs Committee, “AIPAC FAQs,” January 1, 2026; FactCheck.org, “United Democracy Project.” AIPAC describes its mission as strengthening the U.S.-Israel partnership and its approach as bipartisan. FactCheck.org distinguishes AIPAC, AIPAC PAC and United Democracy Project and documents UDP’s status as AIPAC’s super PAC.

[3] FactCheck.org, “United Democracy Project,” September 26, 2024. Reports nearly $9.9 million in UDP spending against Jamaal Bowman and nearly $4.8 million supporting George Latimer; more than $5.2 million against Cori Bush and $3.3 million supporting Wesley Bell.

[4] FactCheck.org, “United Democracy Project,” August 2022. Reports $4.26 million spent opposing Donna Edwards and $1.7 million supporting Glenn Ivey in Maryland’s 4th Congressional District primary.

[5] Jewish Telegraphic Agency, reporting on Summer Lee’s 2022 campaigns. JTA reported that UDP spent more than $2 million trying to defeat Lee in the Democratic primary and approximately another $1 million opposing her in the general election.

[6] Jewish Telegraphic Agency, March 2022. Reports that 37 of AIPAC PAC’s first 120 endorsees were Republicans who voted against certification of Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory and documents AIPAC’s defense of its single-issue approach.

[7] Pew Research Center, “An Early Look at Black Voters’ Views on Biden, Trump and Election 2024,” May 2024; and “How Voting Patterns Changed in the 2024 Election,” June 2025. Pew found 82% of Black adults prioritized domestic over foreign policy and documented multiple domestic policy priorities. Its validated-voter study found 83% of Black voters supported Harris and 15% supported Trump in 2024.

[8] AIPAC, “Policy & Politics: Keeping Israel Safe and Congress Pro-Israel,” November 7, 2024. AIPAC reported endorsing 361 candidates, with 326 winning their general elections—120 Democrats and 206 Republicans—and described itself as the top fundraiser for members of the Congressional Black Caucus. These figures are AIPAC’s own characterization of its 2024 electoral activity.

[9] J Street, “Mission & Principles.” J Street identifies itself as pro-Israel, pro-peace and pro-democracy and supports both a democratic Jewish homeland and Palestinian national self-determination through a negotiated resolution.

[10] J Street Action Fund, September 10, 2026. Announced a $3 million super-PAC campaign in five congressional races involving AIPAC-backed candidates, describing the effort as part of its pro-Israel and pro-democracy political strategy.