Israel's Lobby: More powerful and more unpopular than ever

The pro-Israel lobby is dominating American headlines during the current election because of its outsized role in competitive House and Senate races — a role that's drawn scrutiny as Israel's popularity among American voters declines.

Eli Clifton and Ian Lustick’s new book “ Israel’s Lobby: America in the Grip of Foreign Power ” unpacks how this network of lobbying groups works to influence American politics, foreign policy, civil liberties and more.

Clifton, a Quincy Institute co-founder, and Lustick, a professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania, recently joined Alex Jordan and Courtney Rawlings on Always at War to discuss the impetus for the book. They also talk about how the Israel lobby has changed in the years since John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt published “ The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy ,” and how the lobby will try to to adjust to changing political realities in the United States.

Clifton and Lustick say that beyond advocating for a foreign policy that does not serve the American national interest, the lobby has in recent years worked to curb free speech, particularly on college campuses.

“We [now] have the problem of the lobby’s' attack on American freedoms domestically,” Lustick said on the podcast. “This is a result of the lobby not being to defend Israeli policies because they’ve become so extreme. So it attacks American freedoms to try to suppress debate, intimidate dissidents and break the institutions that produce those dissidents.”

Candidates supported by AIPAC, the United Democracy Project, its affiliated Super PAC, and other pro-Israel donors and groups, have had notable successes and failures so far in the 2026 primary elections. A challenger, backed by this pro-Israel network, managed to unseat sharp Israel critic Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) in the country’s most expensive ever House primary; while a similar effort in the second most expensive Senate primary in history was unsuccessful when Abdul El-Sayed defeated Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.) earlier this month.

The authors found nine billionaires who, in Clifton's words, indicate that “Israel is the driving motivation for their engagement in American politics.” These individuals have given over $1.7 billion in campaign contributions. In the Michigan Democratic Senate primary specifically, Clifton has noted , an outsized proportion of funds came from out-of-state donors who have previously given primarily to Republican candidates.

As Israel’s popularity suffers in both major political parties, the authors warn that the lobby will look for ways to influence American policy in ways that are more difficult to overturn, turning their preferences into reality without clear oversight from elected officials and the public.

“They want to keep the United States as close as it has been historically,” said Clifton. “And they understand that what that might look like might change over time because public opinion is swinging in a different direction. So they’re trying to figure out how you lock in the United States.”