Common Dreams reports: “42 House Dems Help GOP Pass Bill Targeting ICC Officials Over Israel.”
BRANKO MARCETIC, Branko.95.m@gmail.com, @BMarchetich
Marcetic recently wrote the piece “The Corporate Power Brokers Behind AIPAC’s War on the Squad” for In These Times, which states: “After October 7, United Democracy Project [created by AIPAC] began running digital ads against” Reps. Summer Lee and Jamaal Bowman, “maligning them for their refusal to back the singularly pro-Israel House resolution. …
“Slate reported that AIPAC was expected to spend the gargantuan sum of $100 million during the 2023-24 cycle to unseat high-profile Israel critics in Congress, including Lee and other members of the Squad.
“AIPAC wading into elections was nothing new. … But the sheer scale of AIPAC’s spending – enabled by Supreme Court decisions that have unleashed the distorting influence of big money in elections – and the tactics being used are more recent developments. These pro-Israel groups now directly intervene in Democratic primary races, flooding the airwaves with negative ads defaming progressives in the eyes of loyal Democratic voters. …
“An In These Times investigation reveals the individuals behind AIPAC’s election war chest: nearly 60 percent are CEOs and other top executives at the country’s largest corporations. …
“The 528 individuals and corporations who gave to UDP between January 2023 and February 2024 are largely top-level executives from the finance and real estate industries, along with a smattering of billionaires and other members of the 1 percent. Nearly 60 percent of UDP donors are high-level executives, including CEOs and other corporate officers.
“This dynamic is essentially flipped when it comes to those funding Squad members like Lee, Bowman and Bush, whose 2023-24 donor pool is made up of just 4 percent CEOs and other top executives, while 60 percent are non-executives. …
“Many of the donors to UDP are true blue Democrats – donors like the Hillary Clinton-superfan Haim Saban (whose company once produced the Power Rangers franchise) and former Blackstone Senior Managing Director Steve Zelin (who backed the 2020 presidential campaigns of Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg and Joe Biden).
“But UDP’s single biggest donor is Jan Koum, the multibillionaire former CEO of WhatsApp and prolific Republican donor. He has also been a major funder of groups like Friends of Ir David and the Central Fund of Israel, which fund and support illegal Israeli settlements. Koum’s propensity for sharing pro-Trump and anti-immigration stories from outlets like Breitbart and Fox News made news in 2018.”
