Dozens of members of Congress and Capitol Hill staffers have enjoyed lavish gifted travel to Israel funded by an Aipac affiliate since 7 October 2023, amid Israel’s expanding wars on its neighbors and despite plummeting levels of support among Americans for the country’s policies, a Guardian analysis has found.
Congressional ethics filings and other public records show the trips, led by the American Israel Education Foundation (AIEF), revolved around one-sided briefings on Middle East politics and Israeli domestic and foreign policy. Lawmakers and their staffers from both parties met Israeli officials, military contractors and civil society figures, including Benjamin Netanyahu and advocates for the annexation of the West Bank and the displacement of Palestinians from Jerusalem.
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) and other pro-Israel groups have sponsored such trips for years, and both Democratic and Republican lawmakers have joined. But the continued participation of Democratic lawmakers and their staff on recent trips is particularly noteworthy given how much sympathy for Israel has ebbed among Democratic voters, and the pains that some Democratic politicians have recently taken to distance themselves from the lobby group.
A recent poll found that eight in 10 Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents have an unfavorable view of Israel, along with six in 10 Americans broadly.
The congressional ethics filings show that members of Congress and their staffers were hosted at luxurious hotels, dined at top-tier restaurants and received briefings in at least one West Bank settlement. While one of the trips referenced in this story has previously been reported in broad terms, the Guardian is revealing details relating to itineraries, costs and other trips for the first time.
Since 7 October 2023, at least 26 Democratic and 52 Republican representatives have attended AIEF trips in at least 15 delegations for members of Congress and their staff. The Guardian analysis found that the group paid more than $4.2m for those delegations – an average of over $26,600 per member. A few members – including Democrats Steny Hoyer, Greg Landsman and Brad Schneider – took multiple AIEF-funded trips during this period.
“These trips have been a standard tool for building support for Israel on Capitol Hill,” said Stephen Walt, a professor of international relations at Harvard’s Kennedy School who has written widely about the pro-Israel lobby. “Agreeing to go on one of these trips is also a litmus test for politicians who want to signal a pro-Israel position to Aipac and to important donors.”
AIEF is a charitable affiliate of Aipac, and enjoys non-profit status that allows Aipac to skirt federal prohibitions on lobbying organizations funding overseas travel for US officials. AIEF, incorporated in 1988, is the vehicle through which Aipac funds the week-long Israel trips that have become a fixture of foreign policy education for new members of Congress and their senior aides.
Though legally distinct, AIEF relies on Aipac infrastructure, including office space. In 2019 alone, the Intercept reported, the foundation sponsored 129 trips totalling $2.32m, bankrolled by a small number of Jewish philanthropic foundations including those of Paul Singer, a Republican mega-donor.
No members of Congress or their staffers responded to requests for comment on this reporting.
The AIEF, however, via spokesperson Deryn Sousa, replied in an email: “AIEF missions are designed to educate participants about the US-Israel relationship, the security concerns confronting our closest ally in the Middle East, and the geo-strategic challenges and opportunities in the region.”
Sousa added: “Participants visit historical and religious sites throughout the country and meet with Israeli officials and civilians from across the political spectrum who offer a diverse range of perspectives and opinions, offering well-rounded insights and full transparency into the complex culture, geography, politics and prospects for peace.”
‘Continuity more than change’
AIEF-funded congressional travel to Israel paused for several months following the 7 October attacks and the ensuing war in Gaza, before resuming again in March 2024 when eight Democratic members and one staff member traveled on an itinerary that included a visit to military installations on the Lebanese border and an Israeli military cemetery.
Travel costs for members varied: as in other delegations, members were able to bring family members, and the attendance of Schneider’s wife meant that his travel costs came to over $44,200, according to the filings.
AIEF is not the only group sponsoring lawmakers’ travel to Israel, with the liberal Zionist organization J Street funding trips mostly for Democrats, and other groups – such as the Jewish Institute for National Security of America and the Atlantic Council national security thinktank – funding trips for members of both parties. But AIEF stands out for its generosity in funding Israel travel. The pace of trips since 2024 has largely held steady, even amid a broadening consensus among human rights workers, international organizations and scholars that Israel’s conduct in Gaza constitutes genocide.
The documents show that an AIEF trip from 6-14 August 2025 brought at least 15 Democrats to Israel, including Wesley Bell (Missouri), George Latimer (New York), Eugene Vindman (Virginia) and Gil Cisneros (California). Earlier the same month, 20 GOP House members, including Randy Fine, the vociferous pro-Israel representative from Florida, enjoyed an AIEF-sponsored trip with a similar itinerary.
Bell and Latimer were both elected with the help of millions of dollars from Aipac’s Super Pac, deployed to defeat incumbents Cori Bush and Jamaal Bowman.
Bell has defended Aipac’s role in US politics, including at a St Louis town hall in December, where he faced down protesters who demanded that Missouri politicians stop taking contributions from the organization. Latimer, meanwhile, has faced criticism from progressive groups and his former primary opponent Bowman in recent weeks over chummy public appearances with Mike Lawler, the pro-Israel New York Republican whose seat is in Democrats’ firing line in November.
The August 2025 trip’s opening keynote, titled Overcoming Obstacles to Peace, was scheduled to be delivered by Tal Becker, a former senior legal adviser to Israel’s ministry of foreign affairs. Becker is the lead legal counsel representing Israel at the international court of justice in the genocide case brought by South Africa.
Members were also scheduled for a late-night visit to the City of David archaeological site in occupied East Jerusalem, which is operated by the Elad Foundation, a settler organization that has acquired Palestinian properties in the adjacent neighbourhood of Silwan and uses biblical-period archaeology as a vehicle for Jewish settlement expansion in East Jerusalem.
They also visited a Rafael Advanced Defense Systems facility in Haifa for a session billed as “US-Israel Defense Cooperation” and had meetings with Netanyahu, Yair Lapid and US ambassador Mike Huckabee. They stayed at the luxurious King David hotel in Jerusalem and the upscale Magdala hotel in Galilee.
On the delegation’s third day in Israel, the country’s security cabinet approved a full military reoccupation of Gaza City. The trip ended eight days before the UN-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification system confirmed famine in Gaza for the first time.
AIEF declared per-traveller costs ranging from roughly $16,000 for single members to more than $37,000 for those travelling with a sponsored family member. The total declared value of the trip’s gifted travel to Democratic members alone reached about $400,000.
An earlier AIEF “senior congressional staff” trip, in February 2025, was slated to bring 13 senior House aides to Israel – five Democratic staffers and eight Republicans.
On that trip, the delegation met at the Knesset with Simcha Rothman of the Religious Zionist party. Rothman is the legislative architect of Netanyahu’s 2023 judicial overhaul, the constitutional crisis sparking the nationwide protests that paralysed Israel in the months before 7 October.
On the trip’s final full day, the delegation received a briefing at Alfei Menashe in the occupied West Bank. Alfei Menashe is an illegal Israeli settlement east of the green line, around which Israel’s separation barrier was diverted to enclose the settlement and a number of Palestinian villages on the Israeli side.
AIEF hospitality continued into 2026, up to the eve of Israel and the US’s war on Iran.
An AIEF trip scheduled for February this year – which concluded less than a week before the initial attacks – included five Democratic staffers and seven Republicans.
On that trip, travelers heard from Ohad Tal, an MK with the Religious Zionist party, which is chaired by Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s finance minister. Tal has publicly argued for the full annexation of the occupied territories, in alignment with Smotrich’s settlement-expansion and Palestinian-displacement programme.
AIEF paid just under $17,000 for each staffer, according to the filings; they stayed at four-and-a-half-star hotels in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Tiberias.
An AIEF trip from 16 to 24 August 2025 brought staffers for House Democrats to Israel as Israeli forces were carrying out ground operations in Gaza City. The offices represented were those of John Larson (Connecticut), Kathy Castor (Florida), Luz Rivas (California), Cleo Fields (Louisiana), Yassamin Ansari (Arizona), former member Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick (Florida) and the late David Scott (Georgia).
While Aipac and its big-spending allies were credited this month with tipping the balance against Republican Thomas Massie in Kentucky, recent Democratic primary results suggest that its influence is diminishing in the party, with many Democrats now seeking to distance themselves as the standing of Israel and its US advocates continues to erode.
“I think these recent trips represent continuity more than change,” said Walt, the international relations professor, in an email. However, he added: “Winning people over is getting harder to do given the situation in Gaza and the West Bank and the rightward shift within Israeli politics itself.”
