Six Weeks After Shireen Abu Akleh's Killing: Rep. Auchincloss Accepts $24,000 Trip from AIPAC's Charitable Arm

December 13, 2025

In late June 2022, Rep. Jake Auchincloss and his wife Michelle boarded a flight to Israel, their travel fully funded by the American Israel Education Foundation.¹ The week-long trip, which ran from June 26 to July 2, came just six weeks after Israeli forces killed Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh while she was reporting in Jenin.² Auchincloss has never issued a public statement about her killing.

AIEF: AIPAC’s “Educational” Arm

The American Israel Education Foundation presents itself as a nonprofit educational organization, but its connection to AIPAC is impossible to miss. AIEF operates out of the same Washington D.C. address as AIPAC—251 H Street NW—and its managing director, Arne Christenson, signed off on the ethics disclosures for Auchincloss’s trip.¹ AIEF’s stated purpose, according to its own filings, is “educating policy makers and opinion leaders about the U.S.-Israel relationship.” In practice, this means flying members of Congress to Israel on carefully curated trips designed to cultivate support for Israeli government positions.

This relationship matters because Auchincloss is not simply a neutral recipient of educational travel. He has received over $863,000 from AIPAC and its affiliated political action committees since entering Congress—making him one of the most AIPAC-funded members of the Massachusetts delegation. The AIEF trip represents yet another layer of financial entanglement between the congressman and the pro-Israel lobby. For a detailed breakdown of AIPAC’s contributions to Auchincloss, see our previous reporting: AIPAC’s $863K+ Investment in Rep. Auchincloss.

The Price Tag: Nearly $24,000 for Auchincloss and His Wife

According to House Ethics Committee disclosures, AIEF paid for the following expenses for Rep. Auchincloss:¹

AIEF covered identical expenses for Michelle Auchincloss, bringing the total value of the trip to $23,923.10 for the couple.¹ The “other expenses” category included security ($775.91), speaker fees ($328.38), hotels for contract staff ($273.73), room rentals and microphone setup ($238.08), meals for contract staff and guests ($186.11), tour guides ($176.38), and miscellaneous costs including photography and entrance fees.

The couple stayed at the Orient Hotel in Jerusalem ($439 per night) and the Magdala Hotel in Tiberias ($265 per night), ate meals averaging $153.20 per day, and traveled by a combination of air, charter bus, and taxi.¹

Silence on Shireen Abu Akleh

The timing of this trip is impossible to ignore. On May 11, 2022—just six weeks before Auchincloss departed for Israel—Israeli forces shot and killed Shireen Abu Akleh, a Palestinian-American journalist who had reported for Al Jazeera for over two decades.² Abu Akleh was wearing a press vest and helmet when she was killed while covering an Israeli military raid in the Jenin refugee camp. Multiple independent investigations, including by the United Nations, CNN, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Associated Press, concluded that she was likely killed by Israeli fire.²

Abu Akleh was an American citizen. Her killing sparked international outrage and calls for accountability from press freedom organizations worldwide. Yet Rep. Auchincloss, who represents Massachusetts constituents and has positioned himself as a defender of democratic values, provided no public statement about her death before, during, or after his AIEF-sponsored trip to Israel. He did not use his meetings with Israeli officials to publicly demand accountability. He did not issue a press release upon his return addressing the killing of an American journalist by a foreign military.

The delegation reportedly “called for an independent investigation” into Abu Akleh’s death as part of their trip agenda,³ but Auchincloss himself made no individual statement on the matter. His silence stands in stark contrast to the detailed media interviews he gave after returning, in which he discussed Saudi-Israeli relations, the Abraham Accords, and regional security—but not the death of an American journalist at the hands of the military he had just toured with.⁴

The Pattern of Influence

This trip did not occur in isolation. It is part of a broader pattern of financial relationships between Rep. Auchincloss and the pro-Israel lobby. AIPAC and its affiliated PACs have contributed over $863,000 to his campaigns. AIEF provided nearly $24,000 in travel benefits. In return, Auchincloss has been a reliable vote for Israeli military aid, including $21.1 billion in supplemental funding, and has consistently avoided criticism of Israeli government actions—even when those actions result in the death of American citizens.

The ethics filings are public record. The trip expenses are documented down to the dollar. What remains undocumented is any indication that Rep. Auchincloss used his access to Israeli leaders to advocate for accountability in the killing of Shireen Abu Akleh—or that he has ever prioritized the concerns of Palestinian-Americans in his district over the interests of his AIPAC donors.

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