The Republican candidate's surprising 'no' to Israel supporters

An unusual rift has emerged between AIPAC and Mike Rogers, the Republican candidate for Senate in Michigan, after his allies asked the pro-Israel lobby not to run ads on his behalf, fearing that association with it would hurt him at the ballot box. The background: a $30 million campaign against anti-Israel candidate Abdul El-Sayed, who won the Democratic primary after making the lobby's intervention a central issue.

An unusual rift has emerged between AIPAC and Mike Rogers, the Republican candidate for Senate in Michigan, after his allies asked the pro-Israel lobby not to run ads on its behalf for him. The dispute does not concern Rogers' positions, which are strongly pro-Israel, but rather the fear that public identification with AIPAC would hurt him in the November midterm elections. The background: AIPAC invested more than $30 million in an attempt to defeat Abdul El-Sayed, an anti-Israel candidate who won the Democratic primary by a razor-thin margin of 1% (about 15,000 votes) after making the lobby's intervention a central issue. El-Sayed has previously called Israel a "rogue state," accusing it of "genocide" and "apartheid." Rogers' team offered the lobby to assist in less visible ways, but AIPAC rejected the offer and demanded a public role. Direct talks have been suspended for now, and Jewish Republican donors are trying to mediate. Michigan is a key state with a large Arab-American population; a Fox News poll found that 55% of its residents oppose continued U.S. aid to Israel.