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March 22, 2026
Key Developments and What We're Discussing Today:
- Tuesday was a big win for Daniel Biss and IL-09. It was a major defeat for AIPAC in a district with a substantial Jewish population that highlighted its incompetence and misplaced priorities.
- Biss will win the general election in November, adding another pro-Israel, Zionist member of Congress to the Democratic caucus.
- If we expect non-Jews to be allies in the fight against antisemitism, we need to celebrate, not mock or condemn them, when they do speak out against antisemitism, and we must be allies to them. Jewish legacy organizations are failing on both counts.
- We must oppose Trump's Iran War and condemn those who, like Joe Kent, invoke antisemitic conspiracy theories to explain the U.S. involvement in war. The responsibility lies with Donald Trump.
- Trump falsely accused Israel of bombing an Iranian gas field without first informing the U.S.
Celebrate Tuesday's win by supporting my work via credit card or PayPal, Venmo @Steven-Sheffey (last four digits, 9479), or check. Thank you.
Greetings!
Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss won Tuesday's Illinois 9th congressional district Democratic primary. This was a major victory for the district and a major defeat for AIPAC, which spent millions of dollars in a futile effort to elect Laura Fine, who finished third.
During his victory speech, Biss said, “AIPAC found out the hard way: the 9th District is not for sale...May tonight be the last time I utter their name.”
AIPAC narrowly averted another New Jersey fiasco, as Kat Abughazaleh, who opposes funding for Iron Dome, finished less than four points behind Biss. Rep. Jan Schakowsky, who is retiring, was an early champion of J Street and endorsed Biss, a J Street endorsee, to succeed her.
Perhaps AIPAC wanted to tarnish her legacy by preventing another J Street-endorsed candidate from succeeding her. It's hard to know what they were thinking. J Street strongly backed Biss in this election.
Biss is a liberal Zionist. As Biss recently told The Contrarian's Jen Rubin, "I’m Jewish. My mother’s Israeli. My grandparents found a safe haven in Israel in 1948 after surviving the Holocaust. Most of my extended family on my mom’s side is still there, and I grew up visiting there every summer. So, Israel… means something to me, and its right to exist as a Jewish democratic state and to defend itself, also means something to me. This is not some box I checked on a questionnaire just to make somebody happy, this is personal."
You'd think he'd be the perfect fit for a district that is 11.6% Jewish. Only 16 districts in the country have more Jews than IL-09. Biss deserved pro-Israel support.
AIPAC thought otherwise. It lumped Biss in with Abughazaleh, who (unlike Biss) opposes funding for Iron Dome, calling both "dangerous detractors," and went all in for Fine.
It was not until the final week or two of the campaign, when AIPAC realized that Fine could never get more votes than Biss but that by tearing him down, they could level the field enough for Abughazaleh to win (what I've been saying long before they blew New Jersey), that AIPAC stopped running anti-Biss ads through its shell PACs and started running anti-Abughazaleh ads.
Groups tied to AIPAC spent nearly $6 million supporting Fine and opposing Biss, plus more money spent on the last-ditch effort to stop Abughazaleh and support Bushra Amiwala (to take votes from Abughazaleh). AIPAC spent more money to defeat Biss than it spent against any candidate in Illinois.
All told, including bundling individual contributions to Fine, AIPAC flushed about $7 million down the toilet in an effort that was doomed from day one (as readers of this newsletter have known for months).
On election night, AIPAC comically suggested that its goal all along had been to stop Abughazaleh and Amiwala (a young Muslim candidate who never had a chance of winning) and claimed a victory of sorts.
AIPAC said, "While disappointed that Laura Fine did not prevail, voters rejected two anti-Israel candidates in this race—Kat Abughazaleh and Bushra Amiwala. We were especially proud to help defeat Abughazaleh, who centered her campaign on attacking Israel and demonizing pro-Israel Americans."
No mention of Daniel Biss, who AIPAC spent far more money opposing than the candidates it named. Does AIPAC think that anyone is going to believe that they had a good night other than those who get their news exclusively from Jewish Insider?
Adam Carlson translated AIPAC's statement into plain English and summarized AIPAC's serial blunders perfectly.
Describing "the idiocy" of AIPAC's political strategy, Dan Pfeffer writes that "AIPAC was hell-bent on defeating Daniel Biss...even though his mother is Israeli and he has refused to call what's happened in Gaza a genocide" because he wanted to condition aid to Israel, "a fairly mainstream position in this era."
"The problem with AIPAC," Pfeffer concludes, is that it "demands complete fealty to their agenda and will spend millions to defeat candidates like Biss, who have good faith disagreements on policy...Their political strategy is abject malpractice...They aren't making the case for Israel or engaging with critics in good faith. They seem to believe they can bludgeon critics into silence with millions of dollars from shadowy PACs."
Even more absurd was AIPAC's post-election claim that being pro-Israel (from its perspective) is good politics. If they believed that was true, they would have mentioned Israel in at least some of their ads.
Ironically, being pro-Israel is good politics--just not "pro-Israel" the way AIPAC defines it. Hence Biss's win in this heavily Jewish district.
AIPAC uses shell Super PACs that don't mention its name because AIPAC knows that they've made the AIPAC brand toxic. Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Rep. Greg Casar (D-TX) said, “We’re just one cycle away from AIPAC running ads in favor of their candidates by saying that person rejects AIPAC."
Biss won despite being significantly outspent for three reasons: First, he was a strong candidate. Second, thanks to Biss's efforts and remarkably strong local journalism, voters knew that AIPAC was behind the ads coming from Super PACs with innocuous-sounding names like "Elect Chicago Women." Third, unlike other dark money groups, AIPAC likes to brag publicly about its influence and its electoral victories, both real and imagined, thus drawing more attention to itself.
Jen Rubin writes that Biss won because he "swiftly called out dark money, exposed AIPAC’s election gamesmanship, and affirmed his bedrock principles. That strategy allowed Biss to prevail on Tuesday...The Jewish community, Democrats, and pro-democracy forces owe him a debt of gratitude."
The New York Times ran an excellent analysis of AIPAC's failures in Illinois. The lesson for other Democrats is to ensure voters know who is behind the ads. The best antidote to money in politics is a well-informed electorate.
Thinking of donating to AIPAC? Illinois Governor JB Pritzker explained on Wednesday that he no longer supports AIPAC because “it became an organization that was supporting Donald Trump and people who follow Donald Trump. AIPAC really is not an organization that I think today I would want any part of.” You shouldn't either.
So I have a deal for you: Take whatever money you were considering donating to AIPAC and split it in two. Give me half. Keep the other half for yourself. You save 50%, I make 50%, we both come out ahead, we both sleep better at night, and the impact on future elections will be no different from if you had given all the money to AIPAC. Win-Win!
A word about allyship. How many times have you heard people complain about certain individuals and groups not standing with us and calling out antisemitism? Yet when these same individuals and groups do speak out against antisemitism, the response from some of us, including some Jewish organizations, leaders, and media outlets, is to question their sincerity. They can't win with us. Is that a smart approach?
I asked Stacy Burdett, a veteran Jewish community advocate, former government relations director at ADL and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. This is what she told me:
"Leaders and organizations publicly scold those who fail to speak out against antisemitism or whose words they think fall short because the one thing Jews agree on is that we sorely need allies. Now, when we can’t find fault with their words, progressives are mocked for daring to say something at all.
"That's a great strategy for a dot com newsletter like Jewish Insider when accelerating the narrative of Jewish isolation generates headlines and agita. But Jewish leaders have always kept their eyes on the more serious goal — building alliances with those who govern us. That's why they've always embraced efforts and statements, even--and especially--from those whose record they want to be better.
"You'll find Jewish organization awards hanging on the walls in offices of many Republicans who have bitterly opposed core Jewish needs, like hate crime laws or keeping Christian prayer out of schools. And today, we are embracing Gulf state leaders who led decades-long boycotts of Israel and Jews and have a long way to go in many areas.
"For strategic leaders, engagement isn't a final 'hechsher,' it's a commitment to the work of growing support and understanding, not clickbait."
Making matters worse, Abe Silberstein explains, is that some American Jewish institutions are no longer even trying to be allies to others, which is short-sighted and contrary to Jewish values.
In Case You Missed It:
- Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY) revealed graphic evidence against Trump in the Epstein Files.
- Jay Michaelson wrote a must-read article explaining why legacy Jewish organizations are focusing on antisemitism from the left when antisemitism is exploding on the right, how these organizations are making matters worse, and what we can do about it, including an analysis of when anti-Zionism becomes antisemitism and a warning that when progressives start sounding like the right, they are only helping the right. I cannot recommend this article highly enough.
- Israeli Knesset Member Meirav Cohen (Yesh Atid) delivered a powerful speech in the Knesset on settler terrorism in the West Bank. Imagine if a Democrat repeated those truths.
- Joe Kent, Trump’s director of the National Counterterrorism Center, resigned over Trump's Iran War. He blamed Israel for dragging the U.S. into a deeply unpopular war. Michelle Goldberg writes, "It’s a powerful story because it’s partly rooted in truth, even if it taps into old antisemitic tropes about occult Jewish control." The lesson, Emily Tamkin explains, is that we must rewrite the rulebook for fighting antisemitism — or conspiracists like Joe Kent will win the narrative wars. Nexus President Jonathan Jacoby warns that the Iran war is setting off an antisemitic chain reaction.
- Trump is again publicly leveling false accusations against Israel. Contrary to Trump's ranting and raving, reports Barak Ravid, the United States had prior knowledge of the Israeli strike against Iran's gas field and even approved it in an attempt to pressure Iran. Dan Shapiro said, "There is zero, I mean zero, chance the IDF would conduct a strike in that location without giving CENTCOM full visibility."
Tweets of the Week. Molly Jong-Fast, Mel, Mike Drucker, and tendollar. Plus a golden oldie from Donald Trump.
Thread of the Week. Stephen McIntyre proves that the most definitive White House statement purporting to justify Trump's war on Iran contained a list of incidents taken from a June 19, 2025, list prepared by a former AIPAC employee for a think tank (FDD) founded "to provide education to enhance Israel's image in North America."
Reel of the Week. Daniel Biss on Pi Day, three days before the election. Can your member of Congress do that?
Video Clip of the Week. Wouldn't it be wonderful if AIPAC could admit its mistakes the way this meteorologist admitted his mistakes about the horrible storm he predicted that never hit DC? Plus this from Casey Mattox.
Music Clip of the Week. Who knew that in 2026 someone was still making good music? New from the Lemon Twigs: I Just Can't Get Over Losing You.
The Fine Print. I read every reply to this newsletter. I reply as often as I can. All I ask is that you read the fine print before you reply or send me anything.
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Be sure to read my posts on distinguishing anti-Zionism from antisemitism, how to heal the generational rift on Israel and antisemitism, and the IHRA definition of antisemitism.
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