WASHINGTON — For 17 years, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., the minority leader, has been taking polite meetings with J Street, a center-left lobbying group that promotes a two-state solution in the Middle East.

But in all those years of relationship building, Jeffries never sought the group’s endorsement. He was more closely associated with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a hard-line pro-Israel lobbying organization that has long supported him financially and has in the past discouraged lawmakers it backs from aligning themselves formally with a group that holds a different stance on Israel.

That changed last month, when Jeffries for the first time was open to and accepted J Street’s official support. It was a coup for J Street, which is highly critical of the current Israeli government and seeking to establish itself as the mainstream voice about Israel on Capitol Hill.

J Street’s endorsement of Jeffries attracted little attention on Capitol Hill, where the group already backs well over half of Democratic members of Congress and the rest of the House Democratic leadership team.

With American support for the Israeli government’s management of the conflict in the Gaza Strip undergoing a seismic reversal, and Democratic voters’ support for the Jewish state dropping off steeply, AIPAC is becoming an increasingly toxic brand for some Democrats on Capitol Hill.

Democrat Lawmakers Turn From Unconditional Support

It is the latest evidence of a realignment underway in Congress on Israel, as Democratic lawmakers turn away from a decades-old bipartisan consensus on Capitol Hill around offering unconditional support for the Jewish state.

Some Democrats who once counted AIPAC among their top donors have in recent weeks refused to take the group’s donations. Its annual trip to Israel, a formative experience for many lawmakers that once drew a majority of first-term members, has seen a drop-off in Democratic attendance. And a majority of the Senate Democratic Caucus has voted in recent months for legislation opposed by AIPAC to cut off weapons sales to Israel.

AIPAC has long been a force on Capitol Hill, able to spend seemingly whatever it took to defeat lawmakers it viewed as hostile to Israel. Last year, for instance, the group spent more than $23 million to defeat Reps. Cori Bush of Missouri and Jamaal Bowman of New York, two progressives who vocally opposed unconditional U.S. aid to Israel.

AIPAC also poured more than $1 million into a Democratic primary in Oregon, boosting Maxine E. Dexter in her race against Susheela Jayapal, a former county commissioner and the sister of Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington, the former chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

When Dexter won, AIPAC crowed about the victory, noting Dexter’s “anti-Israel opponent” had been endorsed by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and by J Street.

But public sentiment on the war in Gaza has shifted in the two years since the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack on Israel. And while Democrats increasingly sympathize with the Palestinians in the conflict, AIPAC has remained unflinchingly loyal to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel. The group has framed his military offensive in Gaza as a “just and moral” war against Hamas, which it says bears exclusive blame for the suffering of civilians there.

And Democrats are less willing to align themselves with that position.

Democratic Members Turn Away From AIPAC

Three Democratic members of Congress who had previously relied on AIPAC as a top campaign contributor have said over the past few weeks that they would no longer accept donations from the group: Reps. Morgan McGarvey of Kentucky, Deborah K. Ross of North Carolina and Valerie P. Foushee of North Carolina.

Dexter, who relied on AIPAC’s financial support to win her primary last year, recently said the United States “must halt the transfer of offensive weapons to Israel and ensure immediate, sufficient and sustained humanitarian aid into Gaza.” She is also a cosponsor of the Block the Bombs Act, which seeks to restrict the sale of specific weapons to Israel until the country meets certain human rights conditions.

Dexter is not on AIPAC’s list of candidates it has endorsed this cycle. A spokesperson for Dexter did not respond to a request for comment.

Jeremy Ben-Ami, president of J Street, said the shifts reflected a disconnect between current views of Israel and AIPAC’s stance.

“We are at a tipping point given what has happened over the last two years in Gaza, and the fact that AIPAC still maintains that all we can do is support the government of Israel — they’ve run into a wall,” Ben-Ami said in an interview.

A spokesperson for AIPAC, Marshall Wittmann, said that “the overwhelming majority” of Democrats continue to understand that being pro-Israel “is both good politics and good policy.”

But dwindling Democratic attendance at AIPAC’s summer trip to Israel, which has long been a rite of passage for new members of Congress in both parties and a powerful recruiting tool for the organization, illustrates the trend.

The trip, hosted by the group’s educational arm, helps AIPAC shape the views of members of Congress on Israel, with some still defending Israel’s conduct of the war despite the considerable evidence that Israeli strikes are regularly killing and injuring civilians and that aid cutoffs have led to widespread hunger.

“What we found is that contrary to world opinion, Israel has been doing everything it possibly can to ensure that there’s minimal damage to civilians who are not part of Hamas’ army,” Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Md., long an unofficial leader of the junket, said in a video he recorded for AIPAC during the trip in August.

In the past, a majority of the first-term Democratic House members would attend. In 2023, for instance, 24 House Democrats, including Jeffries, traveled with AIPAC to Israel. That year, there were 34 first-term Democrats.

This year, 11 out of the 33 first-term House Democrats attended. Jeffries, who regularly made the annual trip, did not go this year. Seven other Democratic members had committed to the trip in August to the point where AIPAC purchased and booked their flights to Israel, according to ethics disclosures, but they ultimately pulled out. And some of the new members who did go received backlash in their districts for participating in an AIPAC-aligned trip.

The pivot underway among Democrats in Congress reflects a broader shift in public opinion. A recent poll from The New York Times and Siena University found that American support for Israel is crumbling, with voters voicing negative views of the Israeli government’s management of the conflict.

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Annie Karni/Lexey Swall
c. 2025 The New York Times Company