Rep. Dean Phillips (D-MN), a retiring Jewish House Democrat and former Democratic presidential candidate, argued on Sunday that the anti-Israel movement inside the Democratic Party is antisemitic and an electoral drag on the party, responding to a tweet about AIPAC from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY).

The back-and-forth highlights the way in which the party’s direction on Israel has become a prominent question in the Democrats’ ongoing debates about how and why the party lost the 2024 election.

Ocasio-Cortez had said on X, “If people want to talk about members of Congress being overly influenced by a special interest group pushing a wildly unpopular agenda that pushes voters away from Democrats then they should be discussing AIPAC.”

Mainstream Democrats have argued in recent weeks that far-left activists and special interest groups have gained too much influence over Democratic policymakers, and that this dynamic has contributed to Democrats’ losses.

Phillips shot back: “If people want to talk about members of Congress being overly influenced by anti-pragmatic and anti-semitic interests pushing a wildly unpopular agenda that pushes voters away from Democrats…”

Ocasio-Cortez also faced criticism from Amy Spitalnick, the CEO of the left-leaning Jewish Council for Public Affairs, who suggested that Ocasio-Cortez’s comments leaned into antisemitic tropes. Notably, Spitanick participated in an antisemitism webinar with Ocasio-Cortez earlier this year.

“There is a critical conversation to be had about AIPAC,” Spitalnick said. “But so singularly focusing on them here — when there are a number of special interest groups that operate the same way — plays into dangerous tropes.”