Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) promised a New Hampshire town hall meeting on Thursday evening that she would boycott the annual conference of the country’s most prominent pro-Israel organization.
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) holds an annual “policy conference” in Washington, DC, that used to draw elected officials and political candidates from both parties.
But last year, almost every single Democratic Party candidate for president, including Warren, skipped the AIPAC conference, except for New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio. Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) met with AIPAC activists in her Senate office but declined to attend the policy conference itself.
On Thursday, speaking to supporters at a get-out-the-vote event in Derry, New Hampshire, Warren took a question from a member of the audience:
Q: I’m an American Jew, and I’m terrified by the unholy alliance that AIPAC is forming with Islamaphobes [sic] and antisemites [sic] and white nationalists [sic]. And no Democrat should legitimize that kind of bigotry by attending their annual policy conference. And I’m really grateful you skipped the AIPAC conference last year, so my question is if you’ll join me in committing to skip the AIPAC conference this march?
Warren: Yeah.
[Cheers, Applause]
Far from being a conference of “Islamophobes and antisemites and white nationalists,” AIPAC opposes all such groups. If anything, AIPAC leans to the left: in 2016, its leadership issued a humiliating public apology after then-candidate Donald Trump criticized President Barack Obama’s policies on Israel and members of the audience — who are supposed to maintain non-partisan decorum — applauded loudly.
Last July, an anti-Israel activist — also in New Hampshire — approached Warren and asked her if she would end the “occupation.” Warren responded: “Yes. Yes. So I’m there.”
Ironically, The Federalist noted, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), who is generally thought of as the most hostile candidate to Israel in the Democratic Party field, said recently that he was not opposed to attending the AIPAC policy conference in 2020.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He earned an A.B. in Social Studies and Environmental Science and Public Policy from Harvard College, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. He is also the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, which is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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