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When I read Form 990, question 3's answer by the the AMERICAN ISRAEL PUBLIC AFFAIRS COMMITTEE for FY 2021 it doesn't make sense to me,

Form 990

Question 3 reads,

Did the organization engage in direct or indirect political campaign activities on behalf of or in opposition to candidates for public office? If "Yes", complete Schedule C Part I.

How can AIPAC answer "no" to that? They put out graphics like this,

Endorsements

And they're very open about taking credit for this campaign activity too. Republishing the claim that "Cori Bush [lost] her seat to AIPAC-backed candidate Wesley Bell"

Twitter gloating

And here is another one "AIPAC ... heleped defeat anti-Israel Squad member Rep. Cori Bush."

Twitter gloating

Under what circumstances, if any, can endorsing particular candidates NOT constitute political campaign activity?

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I took a closer look at the AIPAC 2020 filing, which is the one you're referring to, and it doesn't actually specify any political activity. This is in contrast to the 2021 FY filing, where this item is changed to "yes", and there are political activities reported:

Political activities in the 2021 filing.

According to the filing, the AIPAC PAC was formed in 2021, as a Sec. 527 SSF organization (see the IRC Sec. 527(f)(3) for the definition of SSF):

enter image description here

The endorsements you're quoting are all very recent, and are relevant to the previous (2022) and current election cycles.

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    Cool answer twice over. I find it very hard to believe AIPAC didn't do endorsements and attack adds prior to 2021, but that's an interesting point. I'll have to check into that. It's also interesting that the filing you found isn't on the IRS site. apps.irs.gov/app/eos (I searched for organization name: "American Israel".
    – Evan Carroll
    Commented Aug 19 at 13:50
  • I've mostly heard of that organization being referred to as "the Israeli lobby", and lobbying activities is what they have reported.
    – littleadv
    Commented Aug 19 at 15:27
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    I have no specific insight into this particular organization, but be aware that one "organization" (from a social or marketing perspective) is often multiple legal "organizations" on paper. So it often might be that e.g. you have a choice between donating money to a PAC, or a 501(c)(3), or a 501(c)(4), or some other thing -- all of which together form a related group of organizations that use same name for marketing purposes -- and which one you choose will affect what they can use the money for.
    – Glenn Willen
    Commented Aug 19 at 17:37

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