AIPAC names Elliot Brandt as next CEO amid uncertain future for US-Israel relations
Lobbying group’s former No. 2 takes helm as Israel-Hamas war approaches ninth month and AIPAC draws bipartisan ire from anti-Israel fringes
The next leader of AIPAC will be Elliot Brandt, who has served as a senior official of the pro-Israel lobby for decades and will take the helm shortly after the November US presidential elections, as Israel faces volatile conflicts on multiple fronts.
Brandt, currently the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s vice CEO, will succeed longtime CEO Howard Kohr, who is stepping down at year’s end after nearly 20 years leading the group.
Under his leadership, the organization burgeoned and, in recent years, shifted to launching political action committees that directly fund candidates.
In a statement announcing Brandt’s hire on Tuesday, AIPAC said he “thoroughly understands the strategic challenges and opportunities facing AIPAC, possesses the skills and insight necessary to successfully lead us forward, and demonstrates deep passion for, and commitment to, our work to strengthen and expand the US-Israel relationship.”
Brandt, who became vice CEO earlier this year, graduated from Stanford University in 1990 and has spent almost three decades with AIPAC, much of that time leading offices in San Francisco and then Los Angeles.
According to a 2003 profile in Los Angeles’ Jewish Journal, Brandt wrote to president Ronald Reagan as a child protesting the American sale of arms to Saudi Arabia, then a priority of Israel advocates.
He was at Stanford at the time of the First Intifada, a deadly wave of Palestinian protests and riots in Israel in the late 1980s, and he became director of AIPAC’s Los Angeles office during the Second Intifada in the early 2000s, characterized by suicide bombings and other terror attacks. He later served as AIPAC’s managing director.
Now, he will lead the lobby at a pivotal time. War broke out in Israel on October 7, when thousands of terrorists poured into southern Israel from the Gaza Strip, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages.
Israel’s subsequent military campaign to depose Hamas as the governing power in Gaza and to secure the release of its hostages has sparked outrage across the world, including among some in the United States.
The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 36,000 people in the Strip have been killed or are presumed dead in the fighting, though only some 24,000 fatalities have been identified at hospitals, and the toll includes some 15,000 terror operatives Israel says it has killed in battle.
The International Court of Justice is currently adjudicating a case brought by South Africa accusing Israel of committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, and the International Criminal Court seems poised to issue arrest warrants against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes.
Through all this, AIPAC has prioritized US backing of Israel’s campaign, including through increased military aid, at a time when the Biden administration has openly withheld specific armaments from Israel, and when some in Congress have called for military aid to be withheld altogether.
The lobby has also denounced the international legal cases against Israel and supported efforts in the US Congress to sanction anyone who assists the ICC in prosecuting Americans or Israelis.
AIPAC has also taken aim at Israel’s critics in Congress, who are mostly progressive Democrats. The lobby has also come out against Republicans who have criticized Israel and has drawn fire from figures on the far right.
Meanwhile, AIPAC has drawn ire from establishment Democrats for endorsing Republicans who would not certify Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory over former president Donald Trump, who is currently leading in polls to take back the office in November.
AIPAC’s statement said that Brandt would be a unifying presence as the organization enters a new and — for the issues the lobby cares about — uncertain chapter.
“Over the past nine years, [Brandt] has traveled to nearly every community in the country, meeting with countless AIPAC members and effectively expanding the circle of donors engaging in our work to strengthen bipartisan support for Israel in Congress,” the statement said.
“From major speeches to individual conversations, Elliot is unmatched in how he articulates our mission and motivates our membership,” it said.
