Progressive leader Nina Turner was defeated in the closely-watched Ohio primary for Congress tonight by establishment candidate Shontel Brown, according to reports in the media. The victory is a big win for the pro-Israel lobby inside the Democratic Party– and a blow to the insurgent left wing in the party.
Turner conceded the race at about 10 p.m., saying, “On this night, we will not cross the river.” Brown was leading in the returns by about 5 percent.
Turner blamed her defeat on outside financial contributions to her opponent. “I am going to work hard to ensure that something like this doesn’t happen to another progressive candidate again. We didn’t lose this race, evil money manipulated and maligned this election,” she reportedly said.
Turner, 53, had been co-chair of Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign and is a leading advocate for poor and working class voters. She supported conditioning military aid to Israel, in stark contrast to Brown, 46, a Cuyahoga County councilperson, who embraced Israel in her campaign and was rewarded with substantial donations from pro-Israel groups.
The Democratic Majority for Israel PAC spent a reported $1.9 million to back Brown. The Jewish Democratic Council of America said Jewish voters made the “critical difference” in the race, with Jews turning out at nearly double the rate of other voters in the district and voting largely for Brown on the basis of “Jewish values,” which include support for Israel.
Turner had led the race in polls this spring and pro-Israel media characterize Brown’s victory as an “upset.”
In her victory speech last night Brown thanked her Jewish “brothers and sisters” for their support and linked it to her stance on Israel.
“When you stand on the land, when you see a person who has a firecracker that’s been dropped a drone in the Gaza strip, if you are within a few feet of a bomb shelter you can appreciate the vulnerability of a state,” she told to a crowd. “And that has [helped me understand] the importance of the U.S./Israel relationship.”
The race was viewed by many as another showdown between the Democratic party establishment and its left flank. Brown was backed by a number of big-name centrists, including Hillary Clinton and House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, while Turner was endorsed by progressive lawmakers like Reps. Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib and of course Senator Bernie Sanders.
Brown sought to cast the race as a loyalty contest for Joe Biden.
While Israel was seldom mentioned in mainstream coverage, it was certainly a component of the race. While not a public supporter of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS), Turner has consistently defended the right to boycott. After Israel attacked Gaza this spring, she tweeted support for Palestine.
In contrast Brown positioned herself as a staunch supporter of the Israel. She condemned the BDS movement, opposed calls to condition military aid, and referred to the country as a “bustling democracy.” During the attack on Gaza, that killed almost 70 children, she asserted that Israel has the “right to defend itself.”
Brown was endorsed by a number of pro-Israel lobbying groups, including Democratic Majority for Israel (DMFI). DMFI (which was founded by Yair Lapid’s strategic adviser Mark Mellman) bought attack ads that never actually mentioned foreign policy at all. Instead the group consistently claimed that Nina Turner had been insufficiently loyal to the Democratic party.
Republican Bill Kristol formerly of the (disbanded) Emergency Committee for Israel, also endorsed endorsed Brown.
Democratic Majority for Israel exulted in Brown’s win Tuesday night. Though as it had throughout the campaign, it called itself “DMFI PAC,” understanding that the Israel issue is not very popular.
At The Intercept Matthew Cunningham-Cook reported that much of the money funneled into DMFI’s political action committee came from GOP donors. “As a Democrat who has helped Democrats all over the state, we cannot condone Democrats that are accepting money associated with Trump,” State Rep. Juanita Brent told The Intercept. “How can we have someone who is the party chair and says that she’s a Democrat’s Democrat but is accepting Republican money?”
Brown’s win comes amid a rocky summer for pro-Israel groups like DMFI. Last month Ben & Jerry’s announced it would stop selling ice cream in illegal Israeli settlements, a move that has sent Israeli lawmakers and the country’s U.S. supporters into a hysterical tailspin. The company has been denounced as antisemitic, their decision equated with terrorism, and politicians have vowed to punish it.
https://twitter.com/MaxBlumenthal/status/1422743490224664576
As long as Israeli lobbies and those who proudly state they are “zionists” are allowed to interfere in our political system, as long as Israel’s interference is accepted as the norm, unlike other nations, we will always be seeing wins like this. The only foreign lobby that does not seem to elicit any outrage, is the Israeli one. On Morning Joe no one seemed to mention the fact that this woman was supported very strongly by the zionist lobbies. That is also part of the problem in the US.
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“In effect, he recognized what this column in the Washington Report has been pointing out for decades. Calls for ‘non-interference’ and for the bilateral negotiations between Israel, ultimately backed as it is by the U.S., and the Palestinians, now shorn of almost all allies by U.S. and Israeli diplomacy, are tantamount to thrusting a toddler in the dojo with a champion Sumo wrestler and calling for a fair fight.
“’It is now time for the international community to recognize and confront the consequences of Israel’s policies and actions in this regard. The lack of any international legal accountability has enabled Israel to ignore successive U.N. resolutions, most recently UNSCR 2334 of December 2016, which says that settlement building violates international law. That is why the International Criminal Court’s rulings that it has jurisdiction over the Palestinian territories and plans to investigate war crimes committed by all sides are so important and give grounds for modest hope.’ It is a bold, if somewhat belated statement of the truth. And we can perhaps judge its importance by the deafening sound of silence from the usual suspects, who perhaps judge that attacking such an eminently lucid statement would bring publicity to it.'”
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”Former U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s Bombshell – 2021 August-September – WRMEA
Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, August 2/21. United Nations Report by Ian Williams.
EXCERPT:
“FOLLOWING PUBLICATION of his memoir, Resolved: Uniting Nations in a Divided World, Former U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has written a bombshell of an opinion piece for the Financial Times about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Ban has been in bad company, which might explain it. He is now one of ‘The Elders,’ the group of senior states-people that was founded by Nelson Mandela among others and includes former Irish President and U.N. Human Rights Commissioner Mary Robinson. The Elders have consistently considered U.N. resolutions and international law as more important on the Middle East than the whims of AIPAC as transmitted by the U.S.
“It is a comment on the U.S. and Anglosphere that a U.N. Secretary-General uttering truths that are manifestly self-evident should seem a bombshell, but the quiet unassuming Ban puts all of them, Boris Johnson, Justin Trudeau and Joe Biden to shame. He would have put President Donald Trump to shame as well except the man clearly has none.
“’It is clear that the 1993 Oslo Accords no longer offer a viable pathway toward self-determination for the Palestinians and have failed to deliver peace and security in Israel or Palestine. Instead, Israel has pursued a policy of incremental de facto annexation in the territories it has occupied since 1967, to the point where the prospect of a two-state solution has all but vanished, he wrote for the newspaper, adding: ‘The starting point of a new approach must be to recognize the fundamental asymmetry between the parties. This is not a conflict between equals that can be resolved through bilateral negotiations, confidence-building measures or mutual sequencing of steps—the traditional conflict-resolution tools. The reality is very different: a powerful state is controlling another people through an open-ended occupation, settling its own people on the land in violation of international law and enforcing a legal regime of institutionalized discrimination.’ (cont’d)
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Would Nina done better if she had called out Israeli and Republican interference in the election and talked about all the innocent children killed with our tax money?