Interview with Dr. Michael Rectenwald, Founder of AZAPAC
László Molnárfi
Aontacht Media sat down with Dr. Michael Rectenwald, Libertarian Party (Mises Caucus) member and founder of the Anti-Zionist American Political Action Committee (AZAPAC), a lobby group which seeks to remove Israel’s influence in United States politics. AZAPAC endorses and funds anti-Zionist political candidates, irrespective of whether they run on a Democratic or Republican ticket. As reported by Middle East Eye, it was set up in August 2025, in the midst of Israel’s loss of favour across the political spectrum, and in a video advertisement stated that America should not be a “munitions depot for Israel”. We asked him about the vision behind his project, how his politics informs the lobby group, and what the future holds for AZAPAC.
L: What is Zionism to you? Why should we oppose it? And why should we get rid of Israel’s influence on Western governments?
M: From the standpoint of the American political scenario, Zionism is the extortion of taxpayers and the bribery and blackmail of a political class to Israel’s benefit. What Zionism means for Israel or other people is really not our concern. Our concern is the way Zionism is used to extort money out of our taxpayers and to bribe and blackmail our political class for them to vote on behalf of Israel. Whether Zionism means something like the right to Jewish people to have their own homeland, all that, that is not our concern at all. There are so many definitions of Zionism that we wanted to make it very simple and to give the definition from the standpoint of Americans here in particular. I think it is true for almost all governments. The same is true here that the political class is basically bought and paid for by Zionist lobbies, PACs. So our focus as a PAC is to counter that and to remove Zionists from office. The reason is because Zionism has fat cat money to commit atrocities and crimes against humanity for Israel – and nobody should be paying for that against their will. Certainly they should not be paying for it at all.
It is being done against our will. And that money and arms are used to kill other people. That is not a good use of our taxpayer dollars. It is something that we definitely want to get stopped, and that should get stopped immediately.
L: Yes. Is there, would you say a democratic deficit? That our money, our taxpayer money in America and in the West or wherever is going to a State that commits atrocities, and this happens in a non-democratic way, by Zionism having captured our institutions?
M: Yes, it is not a democratic because the voters are cut out of the political process by virtue of the bribes that are paid by AIPAC and other Israeli Zionist lobbies to politicians. So they are paid, they are bought off, and so they do not represent the will of the people. They are representing the will of these lobbies. This is how our foreign policy has been dictated and it has to end. So, there are a lot of reasons why people should oppose Zionism. First of all, because it is an expansionist project that will never end. Unless Israel gets everything it wants, and who knows how much that is, with greater Israel and so on, they definitely want more territory, and they are trying to get rid of the Palestinians in order to gain it. And then, of course, their campaigns against Lebanon, their campaigns against Iran, their campaigns against Syria and others. They are just a belligerent state. And there is no reason why the United States or any other citizens across the world should be funding their genocidal, territorial ambitions.
L: Can you tell me a little bit about why support for removing the influence of Zionism in politics has progressed from it being not just something that is limited to the Left, but also conservatives and libertarians and more sort of middle of the ground people have gotten on board, coming to realize the dangers posed by Zionism?
M: I think that the Left has been very well organized against Israel for some time. The Right is now catching on and has been very much catching on to the pervasive and pernicious infiltration of our government. For the Right, the concern is largely with national sovereignty. For the Left, it is about Israel’s colonialism, its expansionism, and its genocidal rampages. But for the Right, it also includes the fact that conservatives, real conservatives, do not want to spend money to have other people killed. It is not a conservative value. It is actually a neo-conservative Zionist value that has taken over the foreign policy of the United States and its allies, the United Kingdom and so on and so forth. So, the Right and Left can unite on this particular topic. I have found this to be the case. I would say that we’re getting about 80% of our donations, if not more, from the Right, actually. And probably 20% or less are coming from the Left.
So, to me, that tells me that, look, both the Left and the Right recognize the insidious evil that Zionism is. They may recognize different aspects of this evil. For the Right, it is the subversion of our government by Zionist influence and its impacts. For the Left, of course, it is the empathy they feel for the Palestinians and their antipathy for colonialism and expansionism. The lack of universal values that Israel displays, in that it does not recognize universal human rights, is something that brings the Left in. So, we are trying to appeal to both sides. We are trying to appeal to both Left and Right. Likewise, we are endorsing candidates from Left and Right. We are not evaluating anybody on the basis of their party or even their broader political ideology. The key is whether they are anti-Zionists or not.
L: I think sovereignty for a nation is something that both the Left and the Right can agree on. And I think the moment that this process gets started is also the moment that the cause of Palestine and the cause of anti-Zionism, I think, makes a significant leap ahead. It was bound to happen because Israel is losing a lot of public support. Anti-Zionism was bound to spread to both the Left and the Right.
How has your role or participation as a libertarian influenced this with relation to libertarian principles? And what would you have to say to people who would not identify with the Left about anti-Zionism? What would you say to them about the need for your project?
M: The main principle I bring from libertarianism is the non-aggression principle, the NAP, which simply states that you do not have a right to violate another person or their property. You do not have a right to take their property. Really, for libertarianism, it all devolves to property rights. So, the main property that every individual has is property in themselves. And so to murder people to steal their land, is a violation of the NAP, a massive violation of the NAP. So all governments violate the NAP by definition. But in the case of Israel, it is a double violation because they are stealing money from the taxpayers in order to commit atrocities against other people to violate their rights, their right of property in themselves and their property. Their property meaning the goods that they have, so their land and so on and so forth. So, libertarianism should be opposed to Zionism, absolutely, because Zionism is by definition a violation of the NAP.
L: Do you find that this idea has always been around, the libertarian who is an anti-Zionist and is opposed to Israel, or is this a relatively new phenomenon? Maybe with the Trump administration intensifying its crackdown on civil liberties? So, from the perspective of the Left, it seems there is more cooperation possible with libertarians given the political climate.
M: Yes, I hope so. I have been reaching out to members of different groups on the left. I will say that there have been a few cases where they have rebuffed our efforts to support. For example, we tried to support a candidate for governor in California who’s running as a Green Party member. His name is Butch Ware. They turned down our support because of my Libertarian affiliation, which is just the kind of retardation that we are trying to overcome. People need to understand that we need to unite and put aside these idiotic differences in many cases.
I see no reason why the Left and Right cannot unite on this major issue that impacts all of us. You know, if the Left is concerned about sovereignty, then they should certainly be concerned about Zionism. The Right is becoming more and more concerned about Zionism because they are very, very invested in sovereignty, national sovereignty, and individual sovereignty for that matter. Israel, through its proxies here in the United States, the ADL and AIPAC and other organizations, are trying to make our speech about Israel illegal. They are trying to make it illegal to boycott, divest, and sanction (BDS) Israel. They are trying to make it illegal to participate in BDS in any form, which is a violation of our rights as well. It is a violation of our First Amendment right. Spending money or sending money or withholding money is a protected right under the First Amendment. It is a violation of our right of association and dissociation as well. The right of association implies the right of dissociation and we want to dissociate from Israel. We have every right to do so. So, they are trying to attack our individual rights here as well as destroying people’s lives in Palestine.
L: Absolutely, I strongly agree. I think that the Left is oftentimes really stuck in its own bubble and refuses to be pragmatic and sort of stop and think for a second of, you know, the libertarians, they probably do not agree with us on X, Y and Z, but if they agree with us on this, we should work with them and build bridges. I think that is crucial. We need to use all our forces, because we cannot be free until we get rid of Zionism’s influence in our governments, we cannot set our own destiny as a nation, as a people.
M: Yes, I mean, we could talk about political economy, and all of that stuff later. We can struggle and get back to normal Left-Right antagonisms, but right now, we have a major impediment to any of our objectives, which is opposed to our human welfare and flourishing, no matter how you look at it. So, I would rather support, and we are supporting, Communist candidates over Zionist candidates, period. I will take a communist Anti-Zionist over a Zionist every day of the week. As a libertarian, I oppose colonialism and imperialism. You know, we just have different reasons. But that is all. The end point is pretty much the same. In other words, when we are actually in control of what is happening with our governments right now, we do not have any control, so we cannot dictate any policy. So, yeah, I think we need to put these minor differences aside and not subject people to litmus tests like this one group did for me, and then another group said that since the Libertarian segment that I was involved with was called the Mises Caucus, named after Ludwig von Mises, they said they favored Confederacy. And I thought, no, they do not, that is ridiculous. Nobody’s arguing for the reestablishment of the Confederacy.
L: So, you have set up the PAC, what does it mean to de-Zionize the government? What would that look like? What are the prospects for that?
M: De-Zionizing the government, first of all, will mean getting rid of all these Zionists from the State. It also means cultural work, which we are trying to do as well. So after all, Zionism is a political ideology, and it is a very powerful one that also incorporates and hijacks, I believe, religious beliefs, as in the case of Christian Zionism in particular, which is a particularly nefarious element of all this, because you get all these Christians who are basically committing to a State that violates all of their principles immediately. I mean, as far as I remember, and I am still a Christian actually, the Sermon on the Mount is pretty clear, Blessed are the peacemakers, not the bomb-droppers. I do not know how anybody reconciles Zionism with Christianity, but they manage through the Scofield psy-op which has been run on that. The Scofield Bible, which was a Christian Zionist psy-op, a Zionist psy-op, imposed by Untermeyer, whose aim in Scofield is to construct this Bible that made it look like Christians had to support Israel to be saved, which is just ludicrous.
I think to break through the ideology, it takes different approaches in particular. You could attack the Christian element, you could attack the political element, you could attack the military element and get it across. I think people will break out of their ideology when they have more knowledge. Knowledge of what this ideology really supports and what it really amounts to. It amounts to creating, like, a Christian army for Israel, which is just ridiculous, like a Christian martyr for Israel. So, we need to fight on the political element. We need to fight on the cultural front. We need to fight on the ideological aspect. De-zionized would mean no longer does Zionism have this grip over our country. No longer does this unquestioned support for the Greater Israel project continue. And no longer will people tolerate being robbed to pay for Israel’s genocidal campaign.
L: What is the future of Azapac, and is there anything you would like to share with our readership?
M: The prospects for AZAPAC are enormous. We are growing by leaps and bounds so much so that we are growing beyond our ability to control it. We are growing enormously. The donations are pouring in. By the way, I do have to mention that we cannot accept money from foreigners, from people who are not from the United States, that do not have residence here. However, we could help you set up an AZAPAC-like organization in Ireland and in the UK, and the world. We are willing to spread the model across the globe because this is something needed in all of the countries in which Zionism has overtaken.