AIPAC attack on Jon Ossoff divides Jewish Georgians

Against that backdrop, and with Congress largely sidelined by the Trump administration, AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, sent a blistering email to Jewish supporters last week with the subject, “Jon Ossoff is Failing our Community.”

The powerful pro-Israel group ripped Ossoff, who was on paternity leave at the time, for not releasing a public statement supporting Israel for nearly a week after the Israel-Iran war began. “This is simply unacceptable,” wrote Darren Kendall, the regional political director for AIPAC in Washington.

Frustration, and even anger, toward Ossoff was bubbling over among some Jewish Georgians, too. What good was it to have a Jewish senator if he didn’t speak out in moments like this?

“He doesn’t seem to understand that he has constituents that need him and need leadership,” said state Rep. Esther Panitch, a Democrat from Dunwoody who is the only Jewish member in the Georgia Legislature.

“What we’re missing is leadership. It’s falling to me and it shouldn’t,” she said. “I have no ability to influence foreign policy. I would like him to be more communicative to one of the primary communities who put him there.”

To Panitch’s point, several people I spoke with reached out to Ossoff’s office in the days after the conflict began, asking that he speak out publicly in support of Israel. Instead, they were told the senator was on leave after the birth of his second child. Separately, the Ossoff campaign continued to send fundraising emails at the same time. The dichotomy left some fuming.

Joshua Heller, of Congregation B’nai Torah in Sandy Springs, called last week’s events “incredibly distressing,” particularly since the rabbi’s own daughter and sister were both in Israel when the conflict began.

“I was disappointed, personally and certainly as a leader. I would have liked for him not to wait so many days to say something,” Heller said of Ossoff. “Just a public statement of support to know that Israel is able to defend itself.”

About an hour after the AIPAC email landed in Georgians’ inboxes last Friday, an email from Ossoff came, too, with “an update on the Middle East.”

“Over the past week, as I enjoyed moments at home with my newborn baby daughter and young Jewish family, I thought often of those huddled in shelters across Israel without the same security,” he wrote.

Ossoff detailed the funding for Israeli defense he had supported recently and said the national security of the United States was his highest priority. He also said he’d been in touch with Georgians with family in the area and shared his office number for people looking to reach his staff.

That was enough for Larry Auerbach, a retired lawyer in Atlanta who said he was offended by AIPAC’s email, not the timing of Ossoff’s.

“I am not a spokesman for the Jewish community, but I do know a lot of people. And I literally don’t know people who are not happy with the senator, except possibly my cousin’s widow, and we don’t talk about politics,” Auerbach said.

AIPAC, on the other hand, “is political,” he said. “It’s not the Jewish community.”

Likewise, Rabbi Michael Rothbaum called the email from AIPAC “shameful.”

“This is about the primacy of life and the value of human life, which is not disposable or expendable,” he said. “And these are the things that I’ve seen the senator stand for and these are the things that millions of Jews stand for. (AIPAC) questioning our loyalty, questioning our commitment to Jewish safety, is grotesque.”

Like all of the people I spoke with, Dr. Michael Greenwald, a pediatric emergency doctor from Dunwoody, was deeply troubled by the idea of Iran having access to nuclear weapons. But he also said Ossoff’s approach to Israel over time has been the right one.

“He has weighed the situation, not jumped in and acted like he’s at a pep rally, ready to stand up and applaud no matter what, but has to think about things and weigh the situation,” he said. “And that’s exactly what I think our Founders intended for our Senate.”

Beth Sugarman said she was “horrified” when the United States began bombing Iran and worries that it won’t be “the grand finale” Trump predicted. “And I think it didn’t bother me that there wasn’t a message from Senator Ossoff for a few days, because he is very thoughtful.”

The clash between Ossoff and AIPAC is not a first. After the senator voted in 2024 to block some arms sales to Israel, the bipartisan group blasted him then, too.

A meeting between AIPAC members and Ossoff this spring was “very frank” and “extremely tense,” according to three people who attended the meeting. They also said a follow-up vote from Ossoff to allow additional arms sales to Israel seemed to satisfy the group, until now.

A spokesman for AIPAC would not discuss the most recent email about Ossoff, suggesting we wait until “later in the campaign cycle.”

And that’s the part that Jewish Georgians have long feared, that support for Israel, and even for Jewish people, could become a wedge issue, and once politicized, repel as many Americans as it attracts.

But expect Republicans running for Senate against Ossoff in 2026 to do more than use Israel as a wedge issue. Look for them to say Ossoff’s handling of the conflict, thoughtful or overly cautious depending on who you ask, reveals him as unfit to serve.

“Ossoff has been very distant and weak,” said John King, the Georgia insurance commissioner who is running for Senate and who served in the Army National Guard in Iraq and Afghanistan. “I think Americans and Georgians deserve clarity, not a political doublespeak that looks like a Harvard term paper.”

Panitch, the Democratic representative, said people shouldn’t assume complaints about Ossoff will necessarily translate into Republican votes, if people agree with the Democrats on abortion, health care, and other issues.

But for her, and everybody I spoke with, the current threats against Israel and even Jews themselves, is about more than politics. It’s existential.

“Jews are being hunted in the streets, in D.C., in Colorado, in the Governor’s Mansion in Pennsylvania,” Panitch said. “If Jewish issues were not front and center, then I understand you don’t have to weigh in on everything. But when they are, we expect you to weigh in and to lead.”