To the Editor:

I attended a town hall hosted by Congressman Jake Auchincloss at Needham High on June 28. A constituent pointed out that Auchincloss had received [since 2020] nearly a million dollars in contributions from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and other pro-Israel organizations, and questioned (I am paraphrasing) if that money influenced him. Auchincloss’s response was that AIPAC members, many of them Jewish, were “participating in the political process,” that AIPAC was targeted more than any other lobbying organization, and that incidents of antisemitism are on the rise.

AIPAC’s mission is to influence our elected officials in favor of Israel’s government. Recently, they have also poured enormous sums of money into our elections, often anonymously, through shell organizations. If the current level of criticism of AIPAC (and by extension, their members) appears extraordinary, perhaps we ought to consider that Israel’s massacre and brutalization of civilian populations, largely enabled by American forbearance or even support, are also extraordinary.

There is a reason most of the antagonistic questions at Auchincloss’s town halls are about AIPAC and Israel. Most of his political views are shared by the vast majority of Democrats, and our district is heavily Democratic. However, in refusing to condemn or even acknowledge the widespread war crimes committed by Israeli forces, he has placed himself in a narrow fringe of the Democratic party on this issue.

Finally, incidents of antisemitism are undoubtedly increasing. We must do everything we can to prevent their occurrence, and to hold their perpetrators accountable when they occur. But our elected officials have an obligation to make a clear distinction between these incidents, and political speech against Israel or AIPAC. Instead, some of them cynically imply a connection between the two, to deflect criticism of their indefensible positions. That is what Auchincloss did at his town hall.

Sumit Majumder
Newton Centre