{"id":15623,"date":"2024-12-07T15:15:20","date_gmt":"2024-12-07T15:15:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=15623"},"modified":"2024-12-07T15:15:20","modified_gmt":"2024-12-07T15:15:20","slug":"members-of-congress-have-taken-hundreds-of-aipac-funded-trips-to-israel-in-the-past-decade","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=15623","title":{"rendered":"Members of Congress have taken hundreds of AIPAC-funded trips to Israel in the past decade"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&#8220;Trips to Israel are only one piece of a multipronged strategy for promoting Israel\u2019s interests. AIPAC hosts an annual conference for elected officials in the Washington, D.C., area, which former Rep. Brian Baird (D-Wash.) called the \u201clargest gathering of members of Congress\u201d other than the State of the Union.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The organization spent over $3 million on lobbying last year, and its spending in 2024 currently places it among the top 3 percent of all lobbyist groups tracked by OpenSecrets. Its PAC and super PAC also helped funnel a combined $50.9 million into the 2022 election cycle alone, according to OpenSecrets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Still, AIPAC\u2019s prolific recruitment of members and staff for travel to Israel \u2014 travel which cost at least $10 million, according to LegiStorm data for 2012-2023 \u2014 demonstrates the importance AIPAC places on its travel program. According to the Howard Center\u2019s analysis, roughly half of the current members of the House have traveled with the organization since 2012.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/2024\/10\/30\/israel-aipac-funded-congress-travel-00185167\">https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/2024\/10\/30\/israel-aipac-funded-congress-travel-00185167<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Trips to Israel are only one piece of a multipronged strategy for promoting Israel\u2019s interests. AIPAC hosts an annual conference for elected officials in the Washington, D.C., area, which former Rep. Brian Baird (D-Wash.) called the \u201clargest gathering of members of Congress\u201d other than the State of the Union.<br \/>\nThe organization spent over $3 million on lobbying last year, and its spending in 2024 currently places it among the top 3 percent of all lobbyist groups tracked by OpenSecrets. Its PAC and super PAC also helped funnel a combined $50.9 million into the 2022 election cycle alone, according to OpenSecrets.<\/p>\n<p>Still, AIPAC\u2019s prolific recruitment of members and staff for travel to Israel \u2014 travel which cost at least $10 million, according to LegiStorm data for 2012-2023 \u2014 demonstrates the importance AIPAC places on its travel program. According to the Howard Center\u2019s analysis, roughly half of the current members of the House have traveled with the organization since 2012.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/2024\/10\/30\/israel-aipac-funded-congress-travel-00185167<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[2134,542,194,1585,1033,391],"class_list":["post-15623","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article-share","tag-aipac","tag-congress","tag-israel","tag-jews","tag-lobbying","tag-middle-east"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15623","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15623"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15623\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15624,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15623\/revisions\/15624"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}