Kentucky Representative Thomas Massie is openly feuding with the pro-Israel lobby ahead of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress.
The Republican representative, part of the far-right House Freedom Caucus, is the only GOP member who said he would boycott Netanyahu’s Wednesday speech.
“Today Congress will undertake political theater on behalf of the State Department. The purpose of having Netanyahu address Congress is to bolster his political standing in Israel and to quell int’l opposition to his war,” Massie wrote on X (formerly Twitter). “I don’t feel like being a prop so I won’t be attending.”
In response, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) quote-tweeted the representative’s post, slamming Massie for “standing with” progressives such as Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Bernie Sanders “against our ally Israel.”
Massie shot back, tweeting, “Call me anything you want. I still won’t be attending your war rally.”
This isn’t the Republican’s representatives first time feuding with AIPAC.
On matters of foreign policy and war, Massie often finds himself siding with House Democrats, which has earned him the scorn of pro-Israel groups. As John Nichols wrote for The Nation, “They recognize that he upends the claim that opposition to pro-Israel policies comes from ‘the extreme left.’”
During the Kentucky Republican primary in May, the AIPAC-affiliated United Democracy Project spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on attack ads against Massie. He responded by addressing the effort head-on, saying that the group “bought $300,000 of ads against me because I am often the lone Republican for freedom of speech, against foreign aid, and opposed to wars in the Middle East.” Massie won his primary with a massive 75 percent of the vote.
Massie also voted against both resolutions to censure Representative Rashida Tlaib, the only Palestinian American in Congress, over her comments about the war in Gaza. He helped to kill the initial motion to censure her, but the House passed a second motion a week later.
Massie has since teamed up with progressive House Democrats to condemn Israel’s attack on Iran, and he was accused by the White House of “virulent antisemitism” for an anti-Zionist tweet featuring a Drake meme.
Massie says charges against him of antisemitism are “simply not true” and that he was aiming to squash “open-ended support” for Israel’s war and efforts to shut down free speech.
