AIPAC Ivey
The question becomes — as many celebrate the apparent shift in public opinion on Israel: Why isn’t it having a bigger effect in elections?
Glenn Ivey is “my” congressman. Except he’s not. An activist with Prince Georges 4 Palestine calls him “AIPAC Ivey” — which is apt. He loves going to imperial Israel and meeting with Melenoski/Netanyahu — and of course taking AIPAC cash.
He defeated Donna Edwards in 2020 — who in 2009 was one of the few members of Congress to bother to go to Gaza.
As previously noted, the ads against Edwards were funded by pro-Israeli groups, but they made no mention of Israel. They just accused Edwards of poor constituent services. See news release I did back in 2020: “‘AIPAC Has Taken Over the Democratic Primary Process.’”
Over the last two years, Ivey’s been the target of protests:
But he’s been grateful for his AIPAC support:
And he plans on taking lots more:
Most recently, Ivey voted against the Lebanon War powers resolution put forward by Rashida Tlaib.
Reverse Canary Mission tells us:
Ivey has repeatedly voted to provide billions of dollars in military aid to Israel, directly arming the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) as they carry out mass slaughter, destruction of civilian infrastructure, and ethnic cleansing in Gaza and the occupied West Bank. These funds ensure the continuation of Israel’s genocidal campaign, where confirmed Palestinian death tolls represent conservative estimates due to the systematic targeting of journalists, hospitals, and civil infrastructure — the actual number of Palestinians slaughtered reaches well into the hundreds of thousands.
In May 2024, Ivey voted in favor of H.R. 6090, the Antisemitism Awareness Act, which adopts the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism. This definition weaponizes accusations of antisemitism to suppress protected political speech criticizing Israel’s occupation, apartheid, and genocide. The ACLU has explicitly warned that the bill could pressure colleges and universities to restrict student and faculty expression critical of the Israeli government out of fear of losing federal funding, effectively chilling pro-Palestinian advocacy and equating opposition to settler-colonialism with hatred of Jews.
Ivey is being challenged by Jakeya Johnson and others in the primary on Tuesday, but seems likely to win.
Track AIPAC states that Marylanders pay over $370 million to Israel so it can bomb and slaughter.
The question becomes — as many celebrate the apparent shift in public opinion on Israel: Why isn’t it having a bigger effect in elections?
Kat Abughazaleh, a 26-year-old Palestinian American and "Gen Z granddaughter of Nakba survivors," ran to represent Illinois’ Ninth District in Congress. First time at anything like this. In addition to Palestine, she spoke about what also matters to Americans, such as health care, housing, the "'Have-mores' taking more from the 'have-less' economy," and more. In other words, the type of voice needed in Congress. She came in second in a three-way race to be the Democratic primary winner, besting one Zionist, and coming close to doing the same to the "Israel lite" candidate, enough so to put AIPAC in a panic. By all rights she should have trounced both of them, but to borrow from Thomas Frank, "What's the Matter with the Illinois Ninth"?
49-year-old Mass. Rep. Seth Moulton is challenging 79-year-old and longtime Mass. Sen. Ed Markey to be the Dem's candidate in November, claiming it's time for new leaders in the party, that a "thank you" be given to the gerontocracy as new blood steps in. I wanted to see what's behind this challenge, is it justified, is it genuine? So I attended two of Moulton's campaign events to learn more.
First event - I asked him, "Opensecrets.org says you took in $43,000 from AIPAC last campaign cycle, this gonna continue?" Also, "We recently passed the $1+ trillion per year threshold in wasting money on the Pentagon, with billions of that going to Israel, while the American Society of Civil Engineers gives an overall grade of only a 'C' for infrastructure in this country, with many subcategories of that getting only a 'D+'. Is this craziness gonna continue?"
To the first question he responded that he gave that money back; to the second he started off by saying "of course we have to continue support for Israel" and then quickly shifted to an erroneous example of Pentagon waste by citing the Air Force's A-10 ground attack aircraft, which is actually "very good for the money," if such a term can be used in military spending, it's well-designed, rugged, not steeped in finicky technology, and gets the job done. Pilots and ground crew love it, the generals hate it because it isn't fancy, sophisticated, and packed with "gee, wow!" features, that often don't work.
He mistook his example for the F-35, the most expensive "weapons system" (to date) on the order of a projected $1.5 trillion over its service life, with an operational readiness rate of only 20% because it's tough to keep up with all its design and software problems.
So this boner of a mistake from a former Marine captain with combat experience in Iraq, but he gave the impression - though not a definite answer - that military spending had to be dealt with (how's that for a euphemism?).
Second event - Seeing as I wasn't satisfied with his answers first time around, I figured I'd make another attempt to see where things stood exactly. This time I said, "I'm not out to gig you (he remembered me from the first time just a coupla weeks prior) but I need some clarification. A) What is your understanding of the Nakba, and how would it affect your decisions in office should you be successful in November, and B) Where do you stand on Pentagon spending now crossing $1 trillion per year and there are almost daily reports of problems on the 'T' (the Boston area public transit system). By the way, I'm still kicking myself for not saying that Markey voted "No" on that Pentagon budget.
Without hesitation he said, "Let me take your second question first," which he did, by saying, "First off I want to see our troops get paid." Not only an almost full 180-degree reversal from what he said at the first event, but also a disingenuous, faux, "thank you for your service" bit of horseshit that told me this guy's a phony. But he was deft as politicians so often are, he babbled on until he used up what he felt was the sufficient amount of time and then moved on to the next questioner, completely ignoring my implicit question about support for Israel. So he answered it by not answering it.
All this is by way of an example underscoring your question, "Why isn’t it having a bigger effect in elections?" I just don't know. My only surmise so far is that this country has been so bludgeoned since 9/11 not only by terrorism used as an excuse to put Americans on edge, to expand the national security state, to lead to more unjustified, aggressive military actions, to boost Pentagon spending, to give tax breaks to the already-rich, to gut the safety net, to tick off items on the Right's political agenda as seen in the Heritage Foundation's "Project 2025," and not to be minimized is the narrative about Israel that has been fed to us since well before Leon Uris' "Exodus," that as a people we are just left numb and dumb. And it's only natural that for the most part, that would be reflected in those who are elected to our "representative government."
Good luck with that.
Thanks for your incessant remarks about the pseudo-state called "Israel". My brother joined the U.S. Foreign Service in late 1966, and he wrote me a letter a year later in which he called "Israel" "the bastard state in action." This letter of his probably was inspired by "Israel's" attack on the USS Liberty ship in 1967. It took me many years after that to understand enough more about "Israel" to know why he became anti-Israel so early in his life. I have studied the various definitions available on the Internet of "Israel", "semitic", etc., and I admit to being a total anti-Zionist but not anti-semitic. Semitic refers to ethnicity, which means DNA and not anything historic or political. Wikipedia's definition is this:
Of or pertaining to a subdivision of Afroasiatic Semitic languages: Akkadian, Amharic, Arabic, Aramaic, Hebrew, Maltese, Phoenician, Syriac, Tigrigna etc.
Of or pertaining to the Semites; of or pertaining to one or more Semitic peoples.
(biblical) Of or pertaining to the descendants of Shem, the eldest of three sons of Noah.
(in particular) Of or pertaining to the Israeli, Jewish, or Hebrew people.
Of or pertaining to any of the religions which originated among the Semites; Abrahamic.
The history of what is today called "Israel" is quite sordid. This territory has been conquered and controlled by various groups of marauding and land-seizing peoples for thousands of years, such as the original Jews. Their earliest provable residency in this part of the world is set by historians as the reign of King Hezekiah's from 716 B.C. to 687 B.C. There is nothing mentioned in the Old Testament of the Bible whose date is provable through archeology before 716 B.C. No King David, patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, no Methuselah, no worldwide flood, no Adam or Eve, etc. Everything involving human history is myth from Genesis 1:1 to 716 B.C. Whichever people had enough military strength conquered "Palestine" and ruled there until another more powerful people conquered them and began ruling Palestine until it was their turned to be conquered and replaced by the next conquering army. Anyone who thinks that "God gave the land of Palestine" to Jewish people for all eternity needs to read a lot more widely. I would suggest reading the Wikipedia articles on Zionism, Palestine, Israel, Roman Empire, Ottoman Empire, Theodore Herzl, and Alexander Solzhenitsyn's most recently published book Two Hundred Years Together.