AIPAC donations scandal: secret funding links uncovered by US journalist

Investigative work by a US journalist and campaigner has exposed a new tactic of the US–Israel lobby AIPAC to disguise the funding it donates to politicians to ‘encourage’ them to support Israel and attack its critics.

AIPAC has a new tactic

Journalist Matthew Eadie said earlier this month that he had analysed hundreds of donations — often massive — to US politicians and identified a pattern in which donations were made to politicians previously supported directly by AIPAC, the biggest and most influential US–Israel lobby group, but which are now being made through individuals tied to AIPAC instead, allowing politicians to appear to be at arm’s length:

Then, last week, Eadie posted emails that showed AIPAC using a ‘hidden webpage’ and hidden donation pages that appeared to have generated hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations to “pro-Israel front-runner” Laura Fine and other candidates and incumbents:

Shady websites

Eadie then notes that the homepage of the website AIPAC was pushing (archive) has now been inactivated, but that the donations pages to the pro-Israel politicians are still active — and that AIPAC has not responded to his enquiries:

“what’s also clear is that donors are being sent this link from AIPAC driving donations without any transparency of that happening.”

Matthew Eadie

Popular left activist ‘GenXGirl’ then took Eadie’s research and ran with it, using it to dig into the donations given to Israel-fanatic black politician Hakeem Jeffries. She said that:

Using 3 campaigns for Hakeem Jeffries’ (aka AIPAC Shakur), I created a graphic to help you understand how the secret campaigns are structured & why you won’t be able to see AIPAC in FEC filings but AIPAC will still be able to track donations through unique IDs and show candidates how much their network has donated to buy pro-Israel votes.

Her resulting graphic speaks volumes:

AIPAC’s tactics in response to the hate millions of Americans feel toward Israel because of the Gaza genocide are reminiscent of the way in which Keir Starmer’s handlers — and Starmer himself — hid donations from Israel lobbyists in the run-up to, and during, the Labour party leadership election. Starmer’s faction knew most Labour members would not touch Starmer with the proverbial barge pole if they knew how his and his supporters’ funding was coming from many of the same people who funded the antisemitism scam used to sabotage former party leader Jeremy Corbyn.

The scandal of the alleged criminality of the decision not to declare donations as required by law is covered in Paul Holden’s explosive new book The Fraud, which is being serialised by The Canary. Labour Together, the pro-Israel group that hid huge donations from Israel lobbyists, responded to Holden’s book by setting private investigators onto him to try to dig up dirt.

Featured image via the Canary