The Democratic National Committee took up a direct rebuke of Aipac on Thursday in New Orleans, then turned it aside. A resolution that described the American Israel Public Affairs Committee as having a growing influence was defeated after the committee passed a broader measure aimed at all dark money groups.
The committee also sent two other resolutions — one calling for conditions on military aid to Israel and another recognizing a Palestinian state — to the DNC’s Middle East Working Group. The votes came during the party’s spring meeting, where more than 100 resolutions on a wide range of issues were under review.
The fight was about more than a single lobbying group. It reflected the same Democratic split over Israel that surfaced eight months ago at the party’s 2025 summer meeting in Minneapolis, and it landed in the middle of a week when new polling showed how sharply the party has moved. A Pew Research national survey released this week found that 80% of Democrats and independents who lean toward the party held unfavorable views of Israel, while an NBC News poll earlier this year put that figure at 57%, up from 35% after Hamas killed roughly 1,200 people in the Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel.
Israel’s war in Gaza has only deepened the divide. In the two and a half years since the attack, Israel’s military campaign in the territory has killed more than 72,000 people, according to health officials in the Palestinian territory, and Israel has also joined the United States in attacking Iran in a nearly month-and-a-half war. A DNC committee member who spoke anonymously said the resolutions were problematic for the party, while James Zogby, who has long argued the issue inside Democratic politics, put it bluntly: “Israel’s behavior has turned Americans against it.”
That leaves the party in a familiar place, trying to manage a conflict it cannot avoid and a base that is increasingly unsparing about Israel. The resolutions were nonbinding, but Thursday’s test votes showed that the argument over Aipac, military aid and Palestinian statehood is not fading; it is becoming a regular part of Democratic internal politics.